TIME OF THE MONSTERS – Reading with Şeyda Kurt

The setting is a neighborhood. The time is the apocalypse – or at least that is what a growing number of people believe, spurred on by a prophecy racing through the internet. Young Sanya, with a pistol in her backpack, wanders through the wild, broken neighborhood where people stick together despite everything, until one day she encounters a strange figure. Between a furious epic and the most colorful pop, between an existential opera and the warmest soap opera, Şeyda Kurt explores the possibilities that lie within the collapse of all order. With great narrative power, she poses the question: Can we live differently? Stirring, clever, and full of hope, this extraordinary debut novel answers: Yes.

The author Şeyda Kurt grew up in Cologne-Kalk and studied philosophy, Romance languages and literature, and cultural journalism in Cologne, Bordeaux, and Berlin. She has worked for ZEIT Online and Deutschlandfunk Kultur, among others, is active as a presenter and curator, and has also written texts for the theater. In 2021, she published the non-fiction book Radical Tenderness – Why Love Is Political, followed in 2023 HATE – On the Power of a Resistant Emotion – both became bestsellers. With Time of the Monsters her first novel was published in 2026.

Portrait photo (top): © Harriet Meyer