Shortly before the end of the year, two literature lovers from Görlitz, Professor Raj Kollmorgen and Lukas Rietzschel, took up the cudgels for reading good books. It is often impossible to find them in the stream of publications. That's why each of the argumentative panelists brought along two favorites.

The evening was opened by the head of the university library, Ms. Rubel. With the support of the Saxony5 team, the University Library had made the evening possible in a short preparation time. Special thanks also go to Mr. Jürgen Möldner from Faculty S.

In what is often a lively and stressful pre-Christmas period for many people, the evening felt like an excursion into other times and lives, an effect that many people find increasingly difficult to engage with. Kollmorgen and Rietzschel had given themselves 15 minutes for each book and left the audience with a great deal of curiosity about the selected titles. Thanks to the commitment of the Comenius bookshop, the gift table could be supplemented with literature after the event.

The novel "Die schönste Version" by Ruth-Maria Thomas and the non-fiction book "Adieu, Osteuropa. Cultural history of a vanished world" by Jacob Mikanowski. The novel "The Square" by French Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux and the non-fiction book "The Democratic Regression" by Armin Schäfer and Michael Zürn were also very popular.

Jella, a young woman from Lausitz, is the subject of Ruth-Maria Thomas' novel, which was nominated for the German Book Prize. At the beginning of the book, the protagonist is faced with the broken pieces of a great love affair that ended with her hands around her neck and a report to the police. Jella asks herself how it could have come to this and takes a closer look: at small towns and gravel pits, lip gloss and eye shadow. To friends who carried her through so much. And to that moment when hands closed around her neck.

The American author Jacob Mikanowski has set out in search of traces of his emigrated family's way of life. With "Adieu, Eastern Europe. Kulturgeschichte einer verschwundenen Welt" (Farewell, Eastern Europe. Cultural History of a Vanished World), he presented a book that reviewers alternately rated as a book full of Eastern European clichés or a good patchwork of a lost diversity of peoples and religions.

Anyone who wants to see and hear more from Lukas Rietzschel will soon be able to do so at their local movie theater. The film adaptation of his bestseller "Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen" will be shown from the beginning of April.