Kristine Bilkau to read in the University Library

14 February 2019. Hamburg, 1964. Antonia and Edgar share a dream about a future far their origins. Having grown up in times of war, they want to get to know the world and live differently from their parents. Edgar takes the opportunity to set up an office for an export company in Hong Kong. Antonia is supposed to follow as soon as the office has established itself. After a year of being put off, Antonia cancels their engagement; she does not want to wait and hope any longer. Antonia’s and Edgar’s lives develop along diverging lines, but the pain of separation is a recurring theme in both biographies. Fifty years later, after her mother's death, Antonia's daughter asks herself whether her mother had lived as she had wished: in self-determination and freedom. Who was this man whom she was never able to forget? The daughter will meet him, only once.

Eine Liebe, in Gedanken – "One love, remembered" – is a subtle portrait of the 1960s and tells of love and existential lies, of the hopes and dreams of a generation born during the war. Kristine Bilkau holds a mirror up to us: how much intensity, risk and pain do we admit when it comes to our feelings and emotions?

Basic information about the author
Kristine Bilkau was born in 1974. Her first novel, Die Glücklichen ("The happy ones") met with an enthusiastic response from the media and the public: it was translated into several languages and awarded prizes, among them the Franz Tumler Prize for the best German first novel. She lives with her family in Hamburg.

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