Airlift from Berlin Review

Tobias Haberkorn talks to Zoltán Ádám, a political economist based in Budapest, about the landslide defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary's 2026 parliamentary election. They discuss what it actually means to dismantle a system Orbán spent sixteen years building, whether Peter Magyar and his Tisza party have the tools and the will to restore liberal democracy, and what Hungary's experience reveals about the fragility of democratic institutions everywhere. They also talk about the international far right's investment in Orbán, the legal gray zone of the transition period, and what Zoltán — who lost his own university position under the Orbán government — expects to change now that it's over.

Lauren Oyler talks to Deborah Feldman, author of the memoir Unorthodox and longtime Berliner, about her essay "For the Love of Jews," published in the new issue of Berlin Review. They discuss German philo-Semitism, what Feldman calls a "fetishized compassion" for Jews, how she became a coveted fixture in the German media landscape, and what her experience reveals about the country's complicated relationship with Jewish identity. They also talk about Gaza, the German government's support for Israel, and whether Feldman plans to stay in Germany at all.

Tobias Haberkorn spricht mit Deborah Feldman und Nora Haddada live vor Publikum auf der Leipziger Buchmesse über Minderheiten, Vergleiche und die Tücken der Solidarität. Noras Essay für die Berlin Review untersucht William Gardner Smiths Roman The Stone Face von 1963 — über einen schwarzen Amerikaner, der in Paris dem Rassismus zu entkommen glaubt, bis er sieht, wie die Algerier um ihn herum behandelt werden. Deborahs Essay For the Love of Jews handelt von ihren Jahren in Deutschland und der schleichenden Erkenntnis, nicht geschätzt, sondern konsumiert zu werden. Zusammen fragen sie: Was bedeutet es, wenn die Zuneigung einer Gesellschaft zu einer Minderheit eine andere verdeckt?

Tobias Haberkorn and Lauren Oyler discuss Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, originally published in Italian in 2022 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025. The book, which follows a couple who moves to Berlin around 2010, after the Financial Crisis, has been called a defining millennial novel, praised on its literary merits, and also widely debated and intensely disliked. In this episode, Lauren and Tobias talk about why the novel is so polarizing, what it misses and whether the Berlin depicted even exists anymore.

In the first episode of Airlift, a new show from Berlin Review, Tobias Haberkorn and Lauren Oyler discuss two films nominated for nine Academy Awards each: Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value and Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme. They explore what both films reveal about the widening cultural rift between the United States and Europe, family stories generational trauma, and the role of masculinity.