Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, demands her brother Polynices be buried. He was killed in a duel. Since Polynices attacked the city from the outside leading a foreign army, Creon the ruler had ordered that her brother’s body be left to the dogs and birds, unburied outside the city. Creon invokes the right of the state. Antigone invokes the right of the dead, and buries her brother nevertheless. The authority of a legal system believed to be untouchable collapses because a single person is willing to risk everything.
The German-Turkish writer Feridun Zaimoglu, winner of the 2016 Berlin Literature Prize, and author Günter Senkel have jointly developed a contemporary take on Sophocles’ tragedy.