Samantha Schnee

In Winter Lights, the first novel by Basque writer Irati Elorrieta, the character Añes is a Basque woman who has immigrated to Berlin by way of Paris. The walls of Añes’s Berlin apartment are literally a palimpsest, where she finds the words of previous tenants from pre-unification Germany scrawled on the walls. In this building (and in the neighborhoods of Moabit, Gesundbrunnen, and Wedding), she begins to build a community for herself. “Añes’s story explores the contradictions of pulling up roots and embarking on a new life: melancholy and freedom, detachment and memory, alienation, and independence,” Schnee writes. Schnee plans to explore Berlin to ensure that she accurately depicts the neighborhoods that provide the novel’s setting and atmosphere. Another goal is to meet with Elorrieta, who lives in Berlin, to review challenging passages in the text and to develop a thorough understanding of how the novel relates to the texts Elorrieta cites in her acknowledgements. Elorrieta’s novel shows how the fabric of this cosmopolitan metropolis is woven together each day by the city’s inhabitants. “Because globalization has enhanced mobility throughout Europe and around the globe, readers in New York, London, Istanbul, and beyond will see themselves reflected in this ‘polyphonic’ and ‘cinematic’ novel,” Schnee writes. Elorrieta translated her novel from Basque to Spanish; Schnee is working from the Spanish.