Arnon Grunberg

Rituals

Spritzer

After twenty four hours in Pordenone somebody pointed out to me that the festival in this town called Pordenonelegge means: Pordenone reads.
Yesterday Pordenone was above all shopping, drinking Spritzer and in between listening to all kinds of authors and philosophers.
I was being interviewed by an Italian author named Beppe Sebaste. In my experience Italian interviewers can be rather longwinded but Beppe Sebaste was a pleasant man with beautiful sandals. He managed to keep his questions relatively short and to the point.
I had to answer a question about linguistic rituals regarding the Italian translation of my novel “The Asylum Seeker”. Conversations about linguistic rituals cause often confusion. And I’m not sure if the main character of this novel, Beck, is mired in linguistic rituals.
So I answered: “Well, how to get into a relationship is one thing, but how to get out of it is another more complicated thing. That’s where the novel starts I would say. But maybe this is a linguistic ritual as well.”