Felicitas Hoppe Book order

What happens when we travel – inward or outward? Do we really arrive anywhere? What expectations and preconceptions do we bring? Do we only see what we want to see? Two international travellers, Felicitas Hoppe and Indra Wussow, discuss the stresses and strains of travel and the joy of the journey. Exploring journeying through familiar and foreign landscapes, they ask illuminating questions about our longing for paradise and the limits and possibilities of cultural appropriation. Inevitably the conversation turns towards enforced settling and retreating during the time of Corona. These musings are flanked by a series of paintings by South African artist, Jaco van Schalkwyk, called Homage to my fellow Travellers. An additional layer of meaning is also added by a sound installation by well-known South African composer and pianist, Jill Richards.

In 1935, Soviet writers Ilya Ilf and Evgeniy Petrov embarked on a legendary journey across the United States, commissioned by Pravda. They traveled ten thousand miles in a gray Ford, ultimately concluding that “if America were Soviet it would be paradise,” a sentiment captured in their travel novel. Eighty years later, a group known as The Fearless Four—artists Jana and Alexej Meschtschanow, writer Felicitas Hoppe, and cultural scholar Ulrike Rainer—set out to retrace Ilf and Petrov's route. Their online project, 3668ilfpetrow.com, documents their findings, which are now presented in a conceptual printed work inspired by Aby Warburg’s design approach. This travelogue features photographs, a conversation with the artists, excerpts from Hoppe’s novel Prawda: Eine amerikanische Reise, quotes, historic documents, and cartographic entries that bring America to life. Images of Las Vegas’s Trump Tower, motel carpet patterns, and barren landscapes along the Mexican border are juxtaposed with the original travelers' experiences. The Making of Prawda explores how the earlier work resonates with contemporary social issues, illustrating how stories and myths evolve and acquire new meanings over time.

These five darkly comic vignettes are absurd modern fairy-tales, full of Chaplin-esque slapstick and ominous imagery. From her break-out debut collection, these wildly original pieces demonstrate why Felicitas Hoppe is counted among the greatest living German writers.