Liefern - Tomer Gardis' latest novel
They are everywhere, we see them each and every day. Whether in Delhi, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Istanbul or Berlin, they speed across the cities everywhere: food delivery riders. In his latest novel Liefern (Delivery), Tomer Gardi connects their stories into a global present-day-epic.
Gardis’ travels and research stays in five different cities, including his stay at the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul, serve as the novel’s point of origin.
In close exchange with and accompanied by Mesut Çeki (courier, operator of kuryehaber.com and head of the association Kurye Hakları Derneği) and Başak Kocadost (sociologist and activist), he established contacts with various food delivery services in Istanbul.
He talked to them in a number of interviews about their experiences and struggles as well as their hopes and dreams. These impressions provided the basis for Gardis’ fictional writing process for the books Mimesis section, which is set in Istanbul. In this chapter, two people, motivated by plans for a hair transplant, travel from Berlin to Istanbul, where they encounter a food delivery rider. The section Mimesis, written by Gardi in Hebrew during his residency and translated into German by Anne Birkenhauer, is also the longest part of the novel.
In Liefern, Tomer Gardi tells of globalisation and exploitation, of love, family and the great yearning for connection; a literary world tour in six chapters with timeliness and political relevance.
Artist
Tomer Gardi
Tomer Gardi, born in 1974 in Kibbutz Dan in the Galilee, studied literature and education in Jerusalem, Berlin and Beer Sheva. His literary essay Stein, Papier was published in 2011 (Engl. 2013). His debut novel Broken German was published by Droschl in 2016 and he read an extract from it at the 40th Days of German-Language Literature in Klagenfurt. The radio play for Broken German (SWR production, director: Noam Brusilovsky) received the ARD German Radio Play Award in 2017. Die Feuerbringer – Eine Schlager-Operetta (co-production by WDR and BR, director: Susanne Krings) was voted Radio Play of the Month for February 2018 by the jury of the German Academy of Performing Arts. In 2019, Tomer Gardi received the Alfred Döblin Scholarship for his second novel Sonst kriegen Sie Ihr Geld zurück. For his novel Eine runde Sache, he received a work grant from the German Literature Fund in 2020 and a working grant from the Berlin Senate for literature in non-German in 2021. Tomer Gardi won the 2022 Leipzig Book Fair Prize for his novel Eine runde Sache. He lives in Berlin.
Tomer Gardi was a fellow of the Tarabya Cultural Academy from February to May 2024.
Tomer Gardi, born in 1974 in Kibbutz Dan in the Galilee, studied literature and education in Jerusalem, Berlin and Beer Sheva. His literary essay Stein, Papier was published in 2011 (Engl. 2013). His debut novel Broken German was published by Droschl in 2016 and he read an extract from it at the 40th Days of German-Language Literature in Klagenfurt. The radio play for Broken German (SWR production, director: Noam Brusilovsky) received the ARD German Radio Play Award in 2017. Die Feuerbringer – Eine Schlager-Operetta (co-production by WDR and BR, director: Susanne Krings) was voted Radio Play of the Month for February 2018 by the jury of the German Academy of Performing Arts. In 2019, Tomer Gardi received the Alfred Döblin Scholarship for his second novel Sonst kriegen Sie Ihr Geld zurück. For his novel Eine runde Sache, he received a work grant from the German Literature Fund in 2020 and a working grant from the Berlin Senate for literature in non-German in 2021. Tomer Gardi won the 2022 Leipzig Book Fair Prize for his novel Eine runde Sache. He lives in Berlin.
Tomer Gardi was a fellow of the Tarabya Cultural Academy from February to May 2024.