Deniz Ohde

The event will take place exclusively online in the free YouTube livestream. Questions and discussion contributions can be submitted in the live chat of the event or gladly in advance via email to info@dai-heidelberg.de.
Subscribe to our DAI newsletter to never miss a free online event!

Industrial snow marks the borders of the place, a fine acidity lingers in the air, and behind the factory bridge the production halls rustle, where the father pickles aluminum sheets day in and day out.
This is where the first-person narrator grew up; this is where she returns when her childhood friends marry. And as she walks the old paths, she remembers: the father and the blind grandfather, who barely spoke, who didn’t want change and couldn’t throw anything away until the household goods were pouring out of all the cupboards. Of the mother, whose desire for freedom was suffocated in the confines of a West German working-class apartment before she packed her bags in a brief rebellion and left her daughter with her drinking father. She recalls dropping out of school at an early age and the effort to catch up on what she had missed in the second attempt, the shame and fear – first of not passing, then of being relegated to her place as an up-and-comer.

Deniz Ohde, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1988, studied German in Leipzig, where she now lives. For her debut novel Streulicht, which was shortlisted for the German Book Prize, she was awarded the Literature Prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation and the aspekte Literature Prize 2020.

In the series Young Voices at LiZ.

In cooperation with the City of Heidelberg, Office for Equal Opportunities and Mosaik Deutschland e.V. as part of the federal program Demokratie leben! of the Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.