Emine Sevgi Özdamar receives Georg Büchner Prize 2022
News08.08.2022
© (c) Heike Steinweg
The German Academy for Language and Literature will award the Georg Büchner Prize 2022 to the author Emine Sevgi Özdamar. The prize is endowed with 50,000 Euros. The prize giving ceremony will take place in Darmstadt on November 5th.
The jury states:
»With Emine Sevgi Özdamar, the German Academy for Language and Literature honours an outstanding author to whom the German language and literature owe new horizons, themes and a highly poetic sound. Once having come from Turkey to the divided city of Berlin, Özdamar has enriched the German-speaking literary scene for over three decades with her novels, short stories and plays, most recently with the opus magnum Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum. Unusual literary stylistic devices and ways of speaking that are inspired by the Turkish language characterise her multi-perspective texts, which, alongside intimate personal experiences, unfold a broad panorama of German-Turkish history – from the First World War to the spirit of optimism of the sixties and seventies to our present day. Emine Sevgi Özdamar's work opens up a both intellectual and poetic dialogue between different languages, cultures and world views, in which we are invited to participate while reading.«
Emine Sevgi Özdamar, born on August 10th, 1946 in Malatya/Turkey, is a writer, actress and theatre director. Growing up in Istanbul and Bursa, she had contact with theatre early on, which later played a pivotal role in her life. In 1965 she came to West Berlin for the first time. Back in Istanbul, she took acting lessons from 1967 to 1970 and received her first professional roles in plays by Bertolt Brecht and Peter Weiss. After the military coup in Turkey in 1971 with mass arrests and censorship, in 1975 Özdamar went to Berlin again and became assistant to Brecht’s student Benno Besson and director Matthias Langhoff at the East Berlin Volksbühne. Her work took her to Paris and Avignon, then to the Bochum Schauspielhaus under the directorship of Claus Peymann from 1979 to 1984. This period was also the beginning of her writing career with the play Karagöz in Alemania, published in 1982. Novels, short stories and other plays would follow.
In 1991 she achieved her literary breakthrough with the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. The award-winning text was an excerpt from her debut novel, Life is a Caravanserai - Has Two Doors - I Went in One, I Came out the Other, which was published in 1992 and was hailed by critics as a groundbreaking literary event. In 1998 her second novel The Bridge of the Golden Horn followed and finally in 2003 the conclusion of the trilogy, Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde. Wedding - Pankow 1976/77. Three major autobiographically based novels for which she has received many awards, including the Walter Hasenclever Prize in 1993, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1999 and the Heinrich von Kleist Prize in 2004. The novels are set in Istanbul and in the divided Berlin. They deal with the culture and society of the 1970s, political awakening as well as political repression and the freedom of theatre.
Last year, Özdamar once again caught the attention of the German-language literary public with her powerfully eloquent novel Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum. For this novel she received the Bavarian Book Prize 2021, the Düsseldorf Literature Prize 2022 and the Schiller Prize 2022. In addition, the book was on the shortlist for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2022.
Emine Sevgi Özdamar has been a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature since 2007 and a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin since 2014. She lives in Germany, Turkey and France.
Awards (selection):
1991 Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis
1993 Walter-Hasenclever-Literaturpreis
1999 Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Preis
1999 Preis der LiteraTour Nord
2001 Künstlerinnen-Preis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen
2003 Stadtschreiber von Bergen-Enkheim
2004 Heinrich-von-Kleist-Preis
2009 Fontane-Preis, Akademie der Künste, Berlin
2010 Carl-Zuckmayer-Medaille
2012 Alice Salomon Poetik Preis
2021 Roswitha-Literaturpreis der Stadt Bad Gandersheim
2021 Bayerischer Buchpreis (Belletristik)
2022 Düsseldorfer Literaturpreis
2022 Schillerpreis der Stadt Mannheim
2022 Shortlist / Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse (Belletristik)
For more information please visit the author's Foreign Rights Website or contact the respective Rights Manager.
The jury states:
»With Emine Sevgi Özdamar, the German Academy for Language and Literature honours an outstanding author to whom the German language and literature owe new horizons, themes and a highly poetic sound. Once having come from Turkey to the divided city of Berlin, Özdamar has enriched the German-speaking literary scene for over three decades with her novels, short stories and plays, most recently with the opus magnum Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum. Unusual literary stylistic devices and ways of speaking that are inspired by the Turkish language characterise her multi-perspective texts, which, alongside intimate personal experiences, unfold a broad panorama of German-Turkish history – from the First World War to the spirit of optimism of the sixties and seventies to our present day. Emine Sevgi Özdamar's work opens up a both intellectual and poetic dialogue between different languages, cultures and world views, in which we are invited to participate while reading.«
Emine Sevgi Özdamar, born on August 10th, 1946 in Malatya/Turkey, is a writer, actress and theatre director. Growing up in Istanbul and Bursa, she had contact with theatre early on, which later played a pivotal role in her life. In 1965 she came to West Berlin for the first time. Back in Istanbul, she took acting lessons from 1967 to 1970 and received her first professional roles in plays by Bertolt Brecht and Peter Weiss. After the military coup in Turkey in 1971 with mass arrests and censorship, in 1975 Özdamar went to Berlin again and became assistant to Brecht’s student Benno Besson and director Matthias Langhoff at the East Berlin Volksbühne. Her work took her to Paris and Avignon, then to the Bochum Schauspielhaus under the directorship of Claus Peymann from 1979 to 1984. This period was also the beginning of her writing career with the play Karagöz in Alemania, published in 1982. Novels, short stories and other plays would follow.
In 1991 she achieved her literary breakthrough with the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. The award-winning text was an excerpt from her debut novel, Life is a Caravanserai - Has Two Doors - I Went in One, I Came out the Other, which was published in 1992 and was hailed by critics as a groundbreaking literary event. In 1998 her second novel The Bridge of the Golden Horn followed and finally in 2003 the conclusion of the trilogy, Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde. Wedding - Pankow 1976/77. Three major autobiographically based novels for which she has received many awards, including the Walter Hasenclever Prize in 1993, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1999 and the Heinrich von Kleist Prize in 2004. The novels are set in Istanbul and in the divided Berlin. They deal with the culture and society of the 1970s, political awakening as well as political repression and the freedom of theatre.
Last year, Özdamar once again caught the attention of the German-language literary public with her powerfully eloquent novel Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum. For this novel she received the Bavarian Book Prize 2021, the Düsseldorf Literature Prize 2022 and the Schiller Prize 2022. In addition, the book was on the shortlist for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2022.
Emine Sevgi Özdamar has been a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature since 2007 and a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin since 2014. She lives in Germany, Turkey and France.
Awards (selection):
1991 Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis
1993 Walter-Hasenclever-Literaturpreis
1999 Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Preis
1999 Preis der LiteraTour Nord
2001 Künstlerinnen-Preis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen
2003 Stadtschreiber von Bergen-Enkheim
2004 Heinrich-von-Kleist-Preis
2009 Fontane-Preis, Akademie der Künste, Berlin
2010 Carl-Zuckmayer-Medaille
2012 Alice Salomon Poetik Preis
2021 Roswitha-Literaturpreis der Stadt Bad Gandersheim
2021 Bayerischer Buchpreis (Belletristik)
2022 Düsseldorfer Literaturpreis
2022 Schillerpreis der Stadt Mannheim
2022 Shortlist / Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse (Belletristik)
For more information please visit the author's Foreign Rights Website or contact the respective Rights Manager.