Real Time

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel, Sasha Marianna Salzmann and Ofer Waldman began a correspondence to make sense of a world left shaken by the unfolding events. Sending each other letters and text messages, poems and music, the two authors attempt to find a language for the things they are seeing and experiencing – beyond the political events of the day. Ofer Waldman tells of his day-to-day in Israel: sitting shiva, speaking to his children, going to vigils, listening to the sounds of the war. While Sasha Marianna Salzmann conveys their experiences and observations in various cities around Europe in concise and delicate language. Salzmann sits by the memorial to murdered Jews on the banks of the Danube in Budapest, gets into arguments in Viennese coffeehouses, and watches as the flashing lights of police convoys head toward demonstrations in Berlin.

What is left of our old certainties after October 7th, what is still standing amid the whirlwind of opinions, assertions, and statements? And what appears to have been irrevocably lost as a result of the horrific war in the Middle East? In the attempt to approach these questions through literature, a dialogue emerges that crystallises into the document of a friendship: I see you, these letters say, I can’t do anything, but I’m here…

»Salzmann’s sentences flow across the page, their style is lavish and immediate […] Wonderful.« Claudia Voigt, Literaturspiegel on Sasha Marianna Salzmann's Beside Myself.