"Navid Kermani is a brilliant scholar and public intellectual, a perfect diasporic figure in that he is both fully German and deeply engaged with the Iranian Muslim culture that he inhabits with full critical commitment. These are speeches that will change the way that people see the world, especially the world of Iran."Daniel Boyarin, author of The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto"Navid Kermani's essays and speeches have established themselves as some of the most brilliant and wide-ranging statements of any German public intellectual. Whether reflecting on politics and the state or mourning his late father, Kermani knows how to be both a public figure and a moving private individual. To read him is to be in touch with both the nerve-ends of modern Europe and its manifold links to the Orient."Jeremy Adler, King's College London"Navid Kermani has established himself as one of Germany's foremost public intellectuals... He has the preacher's skill of connecting the personal and the general, and of using each occasion as an opportunity to say what he feels needs to be said at that moment without its seeming forced or arbitrary."Times Literary Supplement
Editorial NotePrefaceOn the Presentation of the Special Award of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize to the Iranian Writers' AssociationOn the Death of the Unborn SofíaOn the 65th Anniversary of the Promulgation of the German ConstitutionOn Receiving the Joseph Breitbach PrizeAt the Public Commemoration of the Victims of the Paris AttacksOn Receiving the Peace Prize of the German Publishers' AssociationEulogy for Rupert NeudeckEulogy for Jaki LiebezeitOn the Twentieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Department of Jewish History and CultureOn Receiving the State Prize of North Rhine-WestphaliaEulogy for Djavad KermaniEulogy for Karl SchlammingerOn the Seventieth Birthday of FC CologneIn Memory of Egon AmmannDinner Speech at the Investment Conference of Flossbach von Storch AGKeynote Address to the Congress of the International Association for Analytical PsychologyStatement before the Opening Reading of the Harbour Front Literature FestivalOn Receiving the Hölderlin Prize of the City of Bad Homburg vor der HöheOn a Concert by the WDR Symphony Orchestra in the Broadcast Series 'Music in Dialogue'Epilogue: On My Bookseller, Ömer ÖzerturgutNotes
Navid Kermani is a writer and scholar who lives in Cologne, Germany. He has received numerous accolades for his literary and academic work, including the 2015 Peace Prize of the German Publishers' Association, Germany's most prestigious cultural award.