Lesung: Alexander Johannes Edmonds

Camera Obscura:  Life becomes art, and art life, spurred on by obsession, voyeurism, and innocence. Three people become caught in an intricate murky chain of consequences in which personality and performance are two sides of the same coin, narrative sleeps with reality, and nothing seems to be in focus. The only things black and white in this story are the chessboards over which story unfolds and the cinema the characters find themselves unwillingly imitating. Bildungsroman Noir. 

I lurched back into a guard and caught him with a drunken jab from my left. I had time for a right hook as he lunged at me and then we were falling together towards the ground, hatefully intertwined. I heard a ringing in my ears as we hit which became a girl’s scream. I was trying to pin him but he deftly rolled. His glasses had fallen off and I recall seeing his eyes without them for the first time, small, dark, vulnerable yet malevolent, as he loomed over me. They filled my vision, consuming me with their cold stare even as I felt the pain of a blow to my kidneys. Then we were torn apart as violently as we had come together, lifted up and pulled away from one another by unseen hands. I strained unthinkingly against them, still looking only at his eyes. I felt my entire body throbbing and myself shrieking animal curses at the woman I loved as she stood before me, her eyes streaming. She was mouthing something I couldn’t hear as she shuddered from her sobs. There was only a ringing and then a creeping, seductive darkness into which I gladly fell.

Alexander Johannes Edmonds was born and raised in Buckinghamshire, England. He read Archaeology and Anthropology at Homerton College, Cambridge, where he began writing, influenced by the university’s vibrant literature scene.

While studying for his master’s degree in Assyriology at the University of Heidelberg, he became deeply involved in the city’s culture scene, collaborating in particular with the Zeitwille art initiative and »Es lebe der König!«, culminating in the organisation of a series of events bringing together new artwork, readings, and live music acts from both Heidelberg and overseas. He has also appeared in sketches, a play as part of the Heidelberger Theatermarathon, and as a narrator for a documentary on transsexuality.

At present, Alexander is a doctoral research fellow at the University of Tübingen. He is also occupied with a multitude of short stories and a brace of novels. Outside of literature, he enjoys smoky pubs, art flics, and jazz manouche, and is desperately in love with the Middle East, where he spends his summers as an archaeologist.