Edgar Selge: Juras letzter Winter
“It doesn’t matter where we begin to practice trust: with ourselves or with others. We just have to start.” Jura Ryabinkin is sixteen years old when he starves to death during the German Wehrmacht’s siege of Leningrad. He left behind a diary that the narrator of this novel reads over and over again, until he soon feels as though he knows the boy. Jura becomes a character in the novel, as does the narrator. Their encounter begins cautiously and grows ever closer as the story unfolds. A dialogue develops between the two about youth, dreams, literature, mothers, violence, alienation, and intimacy, and they reveal their most personal stories to one another. Edgar Selge erects a memorial to a young person who was brutally murdered by the Nazis and brings him to life for his readers. A moving read, a book of boundless literary imagination.
Edgar Selge, born in 1948, grew up in Herford, East Westphalia. In 1975, he completed his acting training at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich. Prior to that, he studied philosophy and German language and literature in Munich and Dublin, as well as classical piano in Vienna. He is one of Germany’s most prominent character actors and has received numerous awards for his work. In 2021, he made his debut as an author with *Hast du uns endlich gefunden* (*Have You Finally Found Us?*). The book remained on the top ten bestseller list for weeks and was enthusiastically celebrated by the press and the public. It was awarded the City of Fulda Literature Prize as well as the Bayern 2 Audience Award.
