Deborah Feldman

At 17, Deborah Feldman was forced into marriage - in the middle of Brooklyn. Sealed off from the outside world, Deborah Feldman lived in an Orthodox Jewish community founded by Shoa survivors. Books were forbidden, Yiddish the only language. At 23, she put her son in her little Kia one morning and ran away from that life. The book she wrote about it, Unorthodox, catapulted her abruptly to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and sold millions of copies. Unorthodox was both a sensation and a scandal. It made her not only a best-selling author, but also an outlaw; she lost all contact with her family. She describes how she fared afterwards in the highly acclaimed experience report Überbitten.

At Zurich Literature Festival, the New York Times bestselling author presents both books, Unorthodox and Überbitten.