Ronya Othmann

“Assad is gone. The regime has fallen. The regime from which my father – a stateless Yazidi Kurd – fled Syria in 1980. I know the country from visiting my grandparents when I was a child. A country where the portrait of the dictator and his father hung on every corner, a country ruled by a family like a mafia clan. For 54 years.” (Ronya Othmann)

A few weeks after the fall of Assad, Ronya Othmann traveled through Syria with her father: a country that seems to have become a stranger to itself. She spoke to people from different backgrounds who have one thing in common: between fear and hope, they want to believe in a future again.

Ronya Othmann, daughter of a German mother and a Kurdish-Yazidi father, writes poetry, prose and essays and works as a journalist. She was awarded the Mara Cassens Prize for Die Sommer (2020), her first novel, and the Orphil Debut Prize, among others, for her poetry collection die verbrechen (2021). Most recently, Vierundsiebzig (2025) was published, a novel about the long history of violence against Yazidis.