Book Club Politics and Literature: Everyday Life Under Authoritarianism

The central theme of the book club is everyday life under authoritarianism and in societies with increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Every month, the book club members read and discuss novels that chronicle both rapid regime changes and the slow slide into a state of increasing discursive reshuffling, pervasive observation, social and personal discouragement, and ultimately, deprivation of liberty. Experiences with authoritarian regimes in the last century provide a suitable framework for discussing a similar slide in our present day (think of the perfection of state controls, but also the control of attention through social media, which an emerging techno-feudalism skillfully exploits). For the interplay between everyday life and authoritarianism, and for the question of how undemocratic views and anti-political behavior patterns insidiously become entrenched in people's everyday routines, novels that focus on the Cold War (or even advance it with specifically literary means) come to mind: just think of George Orwell's 1984, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. However, this is not the only focus, so we would also like to explore our contemporary experiences with authoritarianism. Other key words include the experience of powerlessness in the face of politics, militarisation and nuclear weapons, as well as faith in the future and self-empowerment.

Authoritarianism as the common denominator of many different novels is certainly not an easy-to-define quantity. But as has always been the case with the Politics and Literature book club: It is precisely the discussions triggered by literature that can and will facilitate an engagement with our current (anti)political ways of life.

The book club comprises nine meetings between October 2025 and June 2026, which take place once a month in the organisation Helle Panke in Berlin.

Here is the call for participation (in German).