Writers Without Borders

As international authors find a place in the hearts of Indian readers, Deepanjana Pal examines the global movements that echo in their works. Simon Rowe (Australia/Japan) and Ronya Othmann (Germany) accompany her in this cross-cultural exploration across the page.

About the author Ronya Othmann:

Ronya Othmann, born in Munich in 1993, writes poetry, prose and essays and works as a journalist. She has received many awards for her writing, including the Open Mike Poetry Prize, the MDR Literature Prize and the Caroline Schlegel Prize for Essay Writing.

In 2020, she was awarded the Mara Cassens Prize for Die Sommer, her first novel, and the Orphil Debut Prize, the Horst Bienek Prize and the Horst Bingel Prize 2022 for the poetry collection die verbrechen (2021). An excerpt from Vierundsiebzig, her second novel, was awarded the Audience Prize of the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in 2019. Ronya Othmann lives in Berlin.

Ronya Othmann writes poetry, prose, essays and journalism. You can listen to her poems on Lyrikline, for example. Her prose and essays can be found in various journals, anthologies, and online.
Ronya Othmann writes about  German foreign policy in the Middle East, the genocide of the Ezîdis, trauma, flight, migration, Kurdish issues, queer issues, racism, violence and discrimination. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung she writes the column Import Export. Her journalistic work can be seen on Torial.

About the book: (Translated into Marathi, Bangla, Simhala, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Slovenian)

Die Sommer / The Summers
Published by Hanser Verlag

Leyla is the daughter of a German mother and a Yazidi Kurd... This book is the poignant debut of the winner of the Audience Award of the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition (2019) about the existence between two worlds.

The village is located in northern Syria, close to Turkey. Leyla spends every summer there. She smells and tastes it. She knows its stories. She knows where the suitcases are hidden when the residents have to flee again.

Leyla is the daughter of a German mother and a Yazidi Kurd. She ususally sits in her high school near Munich, and during all summer holidays she sits on the ground in her grandparents' Yazidi village. On the Internet, she sees Aleppo, destroyed by Assad and the murder of the Yazidis by IS, - right next to it the carefree photos of her German friends. Leyla will have to make a decision…Ronya Othmann's debut novel is full of tenderness and anger about a torn world.