Book tips for Emine Sevgi Özdamar: Four books that you should have read

Created: 08/09/2022 11:53 am

By: Sven Trautwein

The author Emine Sevgi Özdamar will receive the Georg Büchner Prize in 2022.

The jury praised the German-Turkish panorama in their books.

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The German Academy for Language and Poetry announced that the author Emine Evgi Özdamar will receive the Georg Büchner Prize 2022.

The prize, which is worth 50,000 euros, will be presented at a ceremony on November 5th.

The Georg Büchner Prize is one of the most important literary prizes in Germany.

The author received many other prizes for her works, including the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 1991 for "Life is a caravanserai - has two doors - I came in through one and went out through the other".

You should have read these other four books by her:

Emine Evgi Özdamar: "A space bounded by shadows"

Emine Evgi Özdamar: "A space bounded by shadows" © Suhrkamp

After the coup in 1971, the military held captive not only the lives but also the dreams of the people in Turkey.

Artists, leftists, intellectuals fear for their existence;

also the narrator who flees from Istanbul across the sea to Europe.

In her luggage: the desire to become an actress and the unconditional desire to make the cultural wealth of her country known elsewhere and to keep it alive, without allowing herself to be limited to her mere origins in the »animal garden of languages«.

And there, in the middle of divided Berlin, on the boulevards of Paris, in dialogue with admired poets and thinkers, she finally finds herself again in the »pause of hell«, in which art, politics and life seem to be fully compatible.

Suhrkamp

Her recently published novel "A Space Delimited by Shadows" was shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2022. The novel is a polyphonic paean to post-war Europe, in which much seemed possible through the power of poetry.

The autobiographical borrowings for which Özdamar's work is famous can also be seen here.

Emine Sevgi Özdamar: "A shadow from a limited space"

2021, Suhrkamp ISBN-13 978-3-518-43008-8

Price: Hardcover €28, e-book €23.99, 762 pages (differs to the format) – order now (promotional link)

Emine Sevgi Özdamar: "The Bridge of the Golden Horn"

Emine Sevgi Özdamar: "The Bridge of the Golden Horn" © KiWi

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The courageous journey of a wanderer between two worlds: With a sharp eye and poetic tongue, Emine Sevgi Özdamar tells of the life of a young Turkish woman in Berlin and Istanbul in 1968, about factory work at Telefunken and the longing for acting, about homesickness and waking up as a Woman, about the political awakening, APO and Anatolia, and the nightmare of political repression.

Kiwi

Emine Sevgi Özdamar "The Bridge from the Golden Horn"

2002, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, ISBN-13 978-3-462-03180-5

Price: paperback €11, e-book €8.99, 333 pages (different format) – order now (promotional link)

Emine Sevgi Özdamar: "The Court in the Mirror"

Emine Sevgi Özdamar "The Court in the Mirror" © KiWi

"Everyone has their own personal city in a city."

The train is a beautiful home,” says Emine Sevgi Özdamar.

But she also arrives: in places like “her main train station” in Düsseldorf, in her apartment there, in East and West Berlin, in Amsterdam, in Istanbul – in the theaters, in song and poem lines.

The memory of people, images, situations, conversations and telephone calls, childhood, life and death - everything is interwoven with precise observations of the here and now to create a journey of thought that the author forms in her very own way in pictures and language.

This volume brings together extremely lively and very personal stories about remembering and approaching cities and people, about the familiar and the foreign.

Kiwi

Emine Sevgi Özdamar "The Court in the Mirror"

2005, Kiepenheuer & Witsch ISBN-13 978-3-462-03001-3

Price: paperback €9.99, e-book €8.99, 131 pages (different format) – order now (promotional link)

Emine Sevgi Özdamar: "Life is a caravanserai - has two doors - I came in from one and went out from the other"

Emine Sevgi Özdamar "Life is a caravanserai, it has two doors, I came in from one and went out from the other" © KiWi

The story of the childhood and youth of a Turkish girl from her birth in Malatya, the numerous moves of the family, constantly threatened by poverty, to Istanbul, Bursa and Ankara.

kiwi

Emine Sevgi Özdamar "Life is a caravanserai - has two doors - I came in from one and went out from the other"

2022, Kiwi ISBN-13 978-3-462-30407-7

Price: paperback €9.99, e-book €8.99, 384 pages (different format) – Order now (promotional link)

Emine Sevgi Özdamar: Powerful stylistic devices

The jury praised the linguistic connection between German and Turkish culture in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's often autobiographically influenced works.

The jury's reasoning goes on to say: "Unusual literary stylistic devices and ways of speaking inspired by Turkish characterize her multi-perspective texts, which, in addition to intimate personal experiences, unfold a broad panorama of German-Turkish history - from the First World War to the spirit of optimism in the sixties and seventies to the present day our present.”

Emine Sevgi Ozdamar

Özdamar was born in Malatya, Turkey in 1946 and is a writer, actress and theater director.

In 1965 she came to West Berlin for the first time and worked there as an actress.