International, lively, stirring and a glance into the famous sewing box – the DAI’s literature programme for the next two weeks! What makes a person a “star”? Words like “star” or even “superstar” are used inflationary, not only in TV shows. Basketball player Dirk Nowitzki is one of the few to whom the term actually applies. How he revolutionized basketball, became a worldwide-appreciated sportsman and still remained a “normal person”, what his everyday life looks like: Thomas Pletzinger, journalist, and André Voigt, basketball player and trainer, tell us about it. Pletzinger has met and accompanied Nowitzki for many years. The Great Nowitzki: Thursday, February 13, 8:00 p.m. On Friday, February 14, 8 pm, the US-American writer Regina Porter will visit us. The multi-award-winning playwright has just published her first novel: the story of a black and a white family spans more than sixty years, reflecting racial segregation and discrimination, but also a mood of political departure and increasing self-confidence. If you literally want to go beyond your own “black and white thinking” and at the same time read a book that you just can’t put down because the tempo is so stirring and the characters are so vivid – come to this reading! icing on the cake: At about 19.30 Regina Porter visits the DAI Book Club, which is discussing “The Travelers” on this evening (start: 18.30) The travelers: Friday, February 14, 8:00 p.m. The French writer Joachim Schnerf asks about memory in his novel “We were a good invention”. How can it be maintained, how does it change? He writes about a Jewish family: “The grandparent generation survived the Shoah, and the generation of children and grandchildren after the death of their grandmother are faced with the question of how to preserve their memories, but also how to rediscover their cohesion. We were a good invention: Tuesday, February 18, 8:00 p.m. US presidential elections seen from a completely different angle: Ronald D. Gerste, doctor, historian and living in Washington D. C. for many years, introduces us to some US presidents who – despite or because of – came to the White House with very unusual biographies and strange behaviour. Do you know which president was a book lover, but who made himself cowboy? Or even who shot another man with his own hands? Get to know them! Drinkers, cowboys, nerds: Wednesday, 19 February, 20:00 And at the end of these literary two weeks a world trip: Raoul Schrott makes a “little light” of world history the main character of his adventure novel: a German gunner named Hannes, who 500 years ago circumnavigated the whole world with Magellan’s fleet. The full title is: “The Story of the Wind or Of the German Canon who first circumnavigated the Earth and then a second and third time”. An adventurous and surprising book – not only because it does not have page numbers! The story of the wind: Thursday, February 27, 8:00 p.m.