Judith Hermann

“My grandfather’s life is an intra-family cold case,” says Judith Hermann. She follows in the footsteps of this grandfather, who was stationed in Poland with the SS during World War II; she links her writing to his long-denied history and the unyielding silence within the family. From Poland, she travels on to her sister in Naples and explores the memories and forgetfulness of subsequent generations.

In *Zwischentöne*, Judith Hermann traces the repressed, the gaps—those of the one who does not speak; those of the silent; and even those of our society. At the same time, she tells of how precariously we settle into our lives.

Judith Hermann’s debut novel *Sommerhaus, später* (1998) received an extraordinary response. This was followed in 2003 by the short story collection *Nothing but Ghosts*; some of the stories were adapted for the screen. Her work has received numerous awards. For *We Would Have Told Each Other Everything*, based on the 2022 Frankfurt Poetry Lectures, Judith Hermann was awarded the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize.