Thomas Mann House Events Archive
February 2026
Navid Kermani: In Search of a Common Cause. Conversations Across the U.S.
Thomas Mann House (1550 N San Remo Drive, CA 90272)
Info
Together with the Goethe-Institut in North America, the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles convenes an extensive transatlantic lecture tour and series of conversations with the acclaimed German writer Navid Kermani to explore how we can build and maintain solidarity among seemingly opposing identities, groups, and geopolitical alliances.
Navid Kermani, one of Germany’s most acclaimed writers and “among the most thoughtful intellectual voices in German today,” according to the New York Review of Books, recently visited some of the world’s major conflict zones, not as a political analyst, but as a literary observer. Together with various U.S. intellectuals and writers, Kermani will discuss: What does it mean to be a writer in a polarized world marked by war, displacement, and political division? How is the concept of “the West” changing? How might literature, poetry, and religion serve as bridges in fractured societies and foster solidarity? These events bring together acclaimed thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic for a conversation on literature, politics, and spirituality at a moment of profound global change.
Polyphony is the elixir of Kermani's international renown: his encounters with times and worlds, in an age of increasing isolation, defend the idea that the world is more than everything that is the case. They defend the existence of something entirely different—the unexpected, the unheard of, and the supposedly lost. For Kermani's thinking, and this is often overlooked, possesses the power of the pariah, that outsider who has understood that one can use one's own dual belonging to one's advantage, both for oneself and for others.
- Marie Luise Knott, Deutschlandfunk
Navid Kermani has established himself as one of Germany’s foremost public intellectuals. The child of Iranian immigrants, he has spoken of himself as belonging, like Heine or Goethe, to a tradition of German cosmopolitanism, open to the world and critical towards the nation.
- Times Literary Supplement
Conversations
In Search of a Common Cause: A Conversation with Krista Tippett and Navid Kermani"
Location: Los Angeles Central Library, Los Angeles
Navid Kermani in conversation with Krista Tippett, author and award–winning host of the renowned podcast On Being.
More information here.
An Evening With Navid Kermani - A Literary Salon
Location: Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
Friederike von Schwerin-High in Conversation with Navid Kermani.
More information here.
Navid Kermani in conversation with Jaron Lanier
Location: Goethe-Institut San Francisco
A conversation on the intersections of literature, technology, and democracy in contemporary society.
More information here.
Navid Kermani in conversation with Andrea Bajani
Location: Goethe-Institut Houston
A conversation on what it means to be a writer in a polarized world and how to build bridges in fractured societies and foster solidarity.
More information here.
Navid Kermani in conversation with Anna Parkinson
Location: Goethe-Institut Chicago
More information soon.
Location: Goethe-Institut New York
More information soon.
Location: Goethe-Institut Washington
More information soon.
Location: Goethe-Institut Boston
More information soon.
Participants
Navid Kermani is an independent German writer living in Cologne. He studied Middle Eastern Studies, Philosophy, and Theater in Cologne, Cairo, and Bonn, where he received the post-doctoral degree (“Habilitation”). For his literary and academic work, he was awarded numerous prices, including the Hannah-Arendt-Prize, the Kleist-Prize, the Joseph-Breitbach-Preis, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Hölderlin-Prize and the Thomas Mann-Prize.
His literary books are published by Carl Hanser Verlag (German) and Seagull Books (English), his academic and non-fictional works by C. H. Beck (German) and Polity Press (English).
Partner
An event series by the Goethe-Institut in North America in cooperation with the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles, and other U.S. partners.
The Truth of Populism: Facts, Fiction, and Truisms in Contemporary Politics
Thomas Mann House (1550 N San Remo Drive, CA 90272)
Sprache: Englisch ・ Teilnahme nur auf Einladung.
Info
Join us in the living room of the Thomas Mann House for a lively conversation between Adrian Daub, German literary scholar and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Stanford University, and Thomas Mann Fellow Nils Kumkar, whose research focuses on political conflict, social inequality, digitalization, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories.
In their conversation, the two acclaimed scholars will examine why “truth” has become such a central and contested issue in contemporary political discourse in both the United States and Germany. Approaching the topic from multiple disciplinary perspectives, the discussion will range from concerns about fake news, declining trust in media and journalism, as well as so-called “alternative facts,” to the broader crises of political legitimacy, conspiracy theories, and anxieties surrounding hybrid warfare in Europe. They will explore how populism both produces its own truths while exposing what might be called public open secrets at the same time. Against this backdrop, the evening probes a more fundamental question: is “truth” itself even the most appropriate category for understanding what is at stake in today’s political conflicts? What we are really arguing about when we argue over “truth”?
Participants
Adrian Daub is a professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford University, and the director of Stanford’s Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research focuses on the intersection of literature, music, and philosophy in the nineteenth century, and he is the author of several books published by academic presses. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The New Republic, n+1, Longreads, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Among his most recent book are The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global (Stanford University Press, 2024) and What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley (FSG Originals x Logic, 2020).
