Isabel Schayani

Safi drags himself across the Balkan route on foot in winter. Ruhi first flies from Tehran to Italy. Omid wants to continue from Calais by rubber dinghy. Melika is stuck in Moria. And Olena, as a Ukrainian, has almost free passage. In her brilliantly written book, Isabel Schayani reports on five tortuous routes to Germany and gives us deep insights into the precarious life in the no man’s land between the borders and in the gray areas of asylum law.

Many escape routes through the Middle East and Africa have Germany as their destination. Here there is supposed to be freedom, schooling and medical care free of charge, and women are allowed to play sports: For people running for their lives or fleeing impoverishment, this is a great promise. They leave their familiar lives behind, usually surprisingly uninformed, with a child and no credit card, in free fall toward a better future. Isabel Schayani has met five refugees over and over again on their journeys over several years. She lets us experience the harassment of smugglers, illegal travel agencies, borders, registrations, camps, applications and internment from the perspective of the homeless. At the end of her eye-opening book, in conversation with those responsible, experts – and with the five refugees themselves – she provides answers to the big question: how can we organize flight and migration in a more humane way?

Isabel Schayani works as a television and online journalist for WDR and hosts ARD’s World Mirror from Cologne. Migration to Germany and Europe has been her most important topic for years. She has received several awards for her reports and features, including the Grimme Award, the Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Special Award, the German Social Award and as Political Journalist of the Year 2020. She is the founder of the online program WDRforyou for and about people who are new to Germany.

Moderation: Veronika Haas

A cooperation of DAI Heidelberg/LiZ and Literaturherbst Heidelberg