During the festival Never Work, Mesut Bayraktar will read from his poetry collection *Linke Melancholie* and his collection of short stories *Die Lage*. The reading will be followed by an ongoing conversation about work and social inequality, class, migration, exhaustion, thereby interrogating how experiences of exploitation and resistance can be conveyed through literature—and how art and political struggles impact each other.

Bayraktar’s writings explore precarious living and working conditions, family relationships, and political experiences. They examine how people live under social pressure and how they relate to one another—while also telling stories of solidarity, anger, and the search for alternative ways of gathering and community-building.

Drawing on the festival’s themes, Mesut Bayraktar and Stefanie Hauser (Sophiensæle) discuss literature and class relations, left-wing melancholy as a political condition, and the possibility of imagining a different future.