Sample Translations English

Ada's Realm

Sample Translations English
  • A resounding feminist novel in the tradition of Virginia Woolf
  • NBG review (Spring 2021) available
  • Full English translation available
  • More than 34,000 copies sold

The long-awaited first novel from Ingeborg Bachmann Prize-winning author Sharon Dodua Otoo

Sharon Dodua Otoo’s courage and passion for narration and her curiosity for understanding the present day are breathtaking. Everything in her world hangs by a silken thread: threatening to fall at any moment, floating in wondrous suspense.

So, too, with Ada, the protagonist of Otoo’s first novel. Ada is not one, but many women: She revolves in orbits between Ghana and London before eventually landing in Berlin. But she is also all women — because these loops transport her from one century to the next. And so, she experiences the misery but also the joy of womanhood: she is a victim, she offers resistance, and she fights for her independence.

With vivid language and infinite imagination — with empathy and humor — Sharon Dodua Otoo’s novel Ada’s Realm paints an astonishing picture of what it means to be a woman.

 

“Sharon Dodua Otoo will leave a lucid trail of words across the German-language literary scene. Some may find this journey arduous, but it will do all of us immense good.”
TAZ

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  • Publisher: S. FISCHER
  • Release: 24.02.2021
  • 320 pages
  • Format: Hardcover
Paulina Hildesheim/laif

Sharon Dodua Otoo

Sharon Dodua Otoo (*1972 in London) is a writer and political activist. She writes prose and essays and edits the English-language book series Witnessed (edition assemblage). Her first novellas die dinge, die ich denke, während ich höflich lächle and Synchronicity were published by S. Fischer Verlag in 2017. "Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin" was awarded the 2016 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. In 2020, Otoo gave the Klagenfurt speech on literature, entitled 'Should Black Flowers Be Allowed to Paint?', which was published by Heyn Verlag. Otoo is politically engaged in the Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland e.V., Phoenix e.V. initiative, and is connected with the Schwarzen queer-feministischen Verein ADEFRA.  "Adas Raum", her first novel, was published by S. Fischer Verlag in 2021. It will be followed in the summer of 2022 by "Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin. Drei Texte". She lives with her family in Berlin, and will be the Schroeder Writer-in-Residence at Cambridge University in March 2022. 


Literature Prizes:
Ingeborg-Bachmann-Prize 2016