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    • Trusted Partner
      September 2007

      Gruppenbild mit Dame

      Roman

      by Böll, Heinrich

      Cited by the Nobel Prize committee as the “crown” of Heinrich Böll’s work, the gripping story of Group Portrait with Lady unspools like a suspenseful documentary. Via a series of tense interviews, an unnamed narrator uncovers the story – past and present – of one of Böll’s most intriguing characters, the enigmatic Leni Pfeiffer, a struggling war widow. At the center of her struggle is her effort to prevent the demolition of her Cologne apartment building, a fight in which she is joined by a motley group of neighbours. Along with her illegitimate son, Lev, she becomes the nexus of a countercultural group rebelling against Germany’s dehumanizing past under the Nazis... and what looks to be an equally dehumanizing future under capitalism.

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      July 2025

      The adventure

      Violent borders, illegal migration and the uncertain quest for life in Morocco

      by Sébastien Bachelet

      This ethnographic exploration of irregular migration from Western and Central Africa in Morocco deconstructs dehumanising narratives of a "migration crisis" and a "sub-Saharan problem" in politics of migration. The book provides an original focus on how migrants understood and experienced their entrapped mobility. The emic notion of "the adventure" at the heart of this study sheds light on a transformative, epic quest to carve out a better life and future. The book traces how young men from Western and Central Africa sought to assert themselves as agents of their own destinies, despite uncertain, illegalising processes. In steering away from aesthetics of despair and fearmongering narratives, the book brings new insights into inter-disciplinary debates (e.g. illegality, uncertainty, immobility, violence, suffering, transit, etc.). Such focus is essential to draw out the complexity and existential depth of (irregular) migrants' lives, journeys, and stories.

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