Literary Salon — new date 08/18/2026 — � Jina Khayyer — In the Heart of the Cat

Literary Salon – new date 08/18/2026 │ Jina Khayyer – In the Heart of the Cat
This date is postponed to 08/18/2026
belladonna has been hosting this open literature forum for women of all ages since November 1988. It is therefore one of the oldest offers of its kind in the state of Bremen. It would be nice if you had read the book, but this is not a condition for participation. In addition to discussing the book, the topic of the respective book is the focus of the discussion. The books can be borrowed from the belladonna library.
The author will not be present.

The book of the evening:

Jina Khayyer
In the Heart of the Cat
Suhrkamp, Berlin 2025

The author has the same first name as Jina Mahsa Amini, who was beaten into a coma by the morality police in Tehran in 2022 and thus murdered. This was the trigger for this politically relevant book. Starting from the brutal present of the regime, her thoughts lead into the past and her stays in Iran.

Jina Khayyer's concern is not to equate the Iranian people with the regime, which wants to force women into invisibility. The text reveals the faces and stories of the women behind the veils imposed on them.
Her language is calm, almost poetic, and she creates pointed dialogues and characters that immediately touch the heart.

Jina Khayyer's novel Im Herzen der Katze is on the longlist for the German Book Prize 2025.