1/22/26
Thu,
19:30

Wo bleibt das Licht
An evening with Ilma Rakusa

Reading
Talk
← / →

© Katalin Deer

Please note that the event is held in German.

Ilma Rakusa (born 1946 in Rimavská Sobota, Czechoslovakia) grew up in Zurich as the daughter of a Slovenian father and a Hungarian mother. She studied in Paris and Leningrad. As a cultural mediator, she became a traveller across different languages and imaginative worlds.

She has translated, among others, Danilo Kiš from Serbo-Croatian, Imre Kertész and Péter Nádas from Hungarian, and Marguerite Duras from French. The complete edition of the works of Marina Zwetajewa, published by Suhrkamp Verlag since 2018, is edited and co-translated by her.

Above all, however, Ilma Rakusa is herself a poet with a now extensive body of lyrical work, and in 2026 she will celebrate her 80th birthday. Her most recent publication is the volume Kein Tag ohne (Literaturverlag Droschl 2022). These are texts about fear between unplastered walls, about the dream of bringing the dead back, and about sleep, which is generous in its details—but also texts in which the poet, after “alle schweren Worte” have been sorted out, enters into a dialogue with silence.

Her latest book, Wo bleibt das Licht (Literaturverlag Droschl 2025), contains diary prose, notes on everyday life and reading, self-conversations, and dialogues with those who are absent.

On the occasion of Ilma Rakusa’s 80th birthday, Peter Söderberg will perform lute pieces by Walter Zimmermann.

In reading & conversation Ilma Rakusa
Moderation Anja Utler