Meet the authors: The Summer of Her Life

In collaboration with the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, we are delighted to invite German artist Barbara Yelin and novelist Thomas von Steinaecker, to discuss, through an online platform with Hong Kong readers, their collaboration on the graphic novel, The Summer of Her Life.

From her old age in a care home, the story’s unlikely heroine Gerda Wendt reviews her earlier life and questions her choices. This poetic, touching and profound graphic novel grapples with questions that are too often left unasked. What is it like to spend your twilight years in a home? How do you know whether you’ve made the right choices? And what does it mean, in the end, to be happy?

©Anjuli Gunaratne

Anjuli Gunaratne, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong, talks to the author and artist about their collaboration, their inspiration for the book, the experience of ageing and how it is changing as we are living longer lives.

©Martin Friedrich

Barbara Yelin was born 1977 in Munich and studied illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, graduating 2004. Her first books, the graphic tale »Le Visiteur« (2004) and the comic »Le Retard« (2006), were published in France. She also regularly published comic short stories in SPRING, an annual comics journal published by a group of female illustrators.

Barbara Yelin's works have been shown in numerous exhibitions. In 2008 she won the comics newcomer prize of the Frankfurt Book Fair, in 2015 the Bayrische Künstförderpreis, and in 2016 the Max und Moritz-Preis for Best German-language Comics Artist. Yelin lives and works in Munich. 

©Dirk Skiba

Thomas von Steinaecker was born in Germany in 1977. A novelist and journalist, he has also written extensively for radio and is the creator of several documentaries, including Richard Strauss and His Heroines. Two of his novels, Wallner beginnt zu Fliegen (2007) and Die Verteidigung des Paradieses (2016), have been nominated for the German Book Prize.

Register here.