About this Event
Come to the Goethe-Institut London for the launch of the English translation of Navid Kermani’s (Armchair Traveller, Haus Publishing, 2026) [dt. “In die andere Richtung jetzt: Eine Reise durch Ostafrika” (C.H. Beck, 2024)] translated by the acclaimed Tony Crawford.
‘Kermani is a great reporter – curious, open, and tireless. – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
‘Among the most thoughtful intellectual voices in Germany today’ – The New York Review of Books
Navid Kermani will be joined in conversation by Simukai Chigudu Associate Professor of African Politics at the Oxford Department of International Development and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University. Simukai is broadly interested in the politics of global health and epidemics, race and identity, citizenship and activist movements, with a regional focus on Africa and the African diaspora. His most recent book was by The Bodley Head and Crown in March 2026.
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Travelling from Madagascar to the Sudan, Navid Kermani found peoples and cultures in flux.
In the Nuba Mountains, people are enduring war; residents of Nairobi inhabit a city shaped by colonialism; in southern Madagascar, farmers and fishers struggle with the first drought and famine to be attributed directly to climate change. As China and the West compete for scarce resources and wealthy Arab countries exert their influence on religion and culture, colonial crimes are perpetuated in extractive economies and unaccountable governance.
Yet the Eastern Africa that comes to life under Kermani’s critical and sensitive eye is that of the farmers and professionals, artists and soldiers, parents and children, priests and imams. Traditional music, Ethiopian jazz, and Sufi ritual songs are powerful currents of identity; faith is a unifying force in contested areas; violence and oppression are answered with perseverance and resistance.
In the Other Direction Now is an essential work of human observation and understanding that reflects on issues of the present moment, and on the fundamental questions of life, in a region too often excluded from the world’s gaze.
Navid Kermani is one of Germany’s most celebrated writers. His many awards include the Kleist Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize, the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Publishers’ Association and, most recently, the Thomas Mann Prize.
Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics at the University of Oxford. He has conducted research in Zimbabwe, Uganda, The Gambia, and Tanzania, and has publications in several leading social science and medical journals. He won the Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award for his account of the 2008/09 cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe [The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe (Cambridge University Press, 2020)]. Prior to working in academia, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service. His most recent book Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire was by The Bodley Head and Crown in March 2026.
Tony Crawford’s translations have twice been shortlisted for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. His translation of Navid Kermani’s Wonder Beyond Belief won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize in 2018.
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Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, London, United Kingdom
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