About the work
“Die Aussprache” is based on the novel “Women Talking” by the Canadian writer Miriam Toews, her seventh novel, published in 2018 by Alfred A. Knopf. The German edition was published in 2019 by Hoffmann und Campe. Toews calls the book an imagined response to real crimes in the Mennonite Manitoba Colony in Bolivia. At the Burgtheater in Vienna, Mina Salehpour is directing a stage version scheduled to open on 24 April 2027.
Plot
In an isolated Mennonite colony, women and girls have been drugged and raped at night for years; the perpetrators come from their own community. While the men are in town posting bail for those arrested, eight women meet in secret in a hayloft over 48 hours. They weigh whether to forgive, to stay and fight, or to leave the colony. The schoolteacher August Epp, the only man present, takes the minutes because the women cannot write.
Cultural significance
The background is the crimes in the Manitoba Colony between 2005 and 2009, for which eight men were convicted in 2011. The novel was a finalist for the Governor General's Award and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Sarah Polley's 2022 film adaptation won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.