A Literary Encounter on a contemporary German literature in English translation titled ‘The Dark Ship’ was held on Saturday evening at the Goethe-Institut Library in the city’s Dhanmondi area. The event was organised at the initiative of Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, in cooperation with The Reading Circle (TRC).  Among other participants were Tanveerul Haque, Syed Badrul Ahsan, Ameneh Ispahani, Niaz Zaman, Asfa Hussain, Jackie Kabir, Nusrat Haq, Masrufa Ayesha Nusrat and Shireen S. Mainuddin who took part in the discussion on the novel ‘The Dark Ship’.
 It is the latest work of the highly successful German author Sherko Fatah. At once a thriller and a political narrative, Sherko Fatah‘s novel reflects a highly topical subject in Europe and the middle east: Flight and migration.
 As the event started off at 6:30 pm, Niaz Zaman, the moderator of the evening took the lead to introduce the novel to the audience. She underlined how much she appreciated the choice of the book for its highly contemporary content. ‘The Dark Ship’ is a story that, all the eleven members of TRC could easily relate to.
Even to the members of the audience, who did not read the book beforehand, the one hour discussion was highly interesting. Several parts of the book were read out, so that the listeners were under the spell of ‘The Dark Ship’. It is the gripping story of a young man leaving his home with the dream to find a safe harbour in the western world. It is about an escape across land and water, from the mountains of northern Iraq to the bureaucracies and mosques of Berlin, through ideology and faith. It is about the search for freedom and its own nature.
The members of the reading circle interpreted different parts of the novel, highlighting quotes that were important to them, criticizing the author for a unilateral picture of Germany with the same passion as they praised him for writing a moving story that makes history and politics comprehensible.