Locations of events.

Literary history is populated by extraordinary heroes, odysseys, and battles. George Eliot, by contrast, pays homage to ordinary, average people, their worries and problems. Because it is these ordinary, small people, after all, who together make up the big wide world.

It’s the time of the Cold War. The cultural imaginary is populated by mad scientists, nuclear physicists, and villains, from James Bond’s Dr. No to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. Friedrich Dürrenmatt brings the question of the responsibility of science in these times to the theater stage.

It’s the high school reunion of your worst nightmares. A newly rich billionaire returns to the small town of her childhood and presents the townsfolk with an ultimatum: Either they kill one of their own or the old lady will financially ruin the town.

Two things Joseph Conrad equally loved equally were being at sea and writing. Based on his own experiences, he tells stories of far-away islands, typhoons, the impenetrable African jungle, steamship expeditions on the Congo river, and mutinies at sea.

Going on pilgrimage is a pious enterprise but, let’s be honest, also a boring one. To combat the boredom, the travelers in Geoffrey Chaucer’s monumental work launch a storytelling competition. Who tells the most entertaining story? Nun, knight, or doctor?