Literature and Minority Religious Identity in Times of Crisis
Literature and Minority Religious Identity in Times of Crisis
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
6:00 p.m.
In Person at JTS
3080 Broadway (at 122nd Street)
New York City
Join us for an evening with multi-award-winning author Navid Kermani, one of Germany’s most acclaimed writers, in conversation with Prof. Vivian Liska (University of Antwerp), prominent scholar of German Jewish literature.
Navid Kermani will read selections from his celebrated work Between Quran and Kafka. He will join Vivian Liska for a conversation about religion and literature in contemporary life. They will focus on the relationship between literature and identity, belonging, community, and solidarity, particularly in times of crisis. They will consider the place of minority religious identity (Jewish and Muslim) in western literature, and the continuing relevance of the German Jewish literary heritage. The conversation will also touch on Kermani’s Iranian heritage and current developments in Iran.
Please contact shbillet@jtsa.edu with any questions.
About the Speakers
Navid Kermani is one of Germany’s most acclaimed contemporary writers. He studied Middle Eastern Studies, Philosophy, and Theatre in Cologne, Cairo, and Bonn. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his prolific oeuvre of literary and academic work, including the Hannah Arendt Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Joseph Breitbach Prize, the German Book Trade Peace Prize, the Hölderlin Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His literary works are published by Carl Hanser Verlag (German) and Seagull Books (English), and his academic and non-fiction books by C. H. Beck (German) and Polity Press (English).
Vivian Liska is Professor of German literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is also Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of the Humanities at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has published extensively on literary theory, German Modernism, and German-Jewish literature. Her books include When Kafka Says We: Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature (2009) and German-Jewish Thought and its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy (2017). She is a member of the German Academy of Language and Literature.
