Fatma Aydemir (Karlsruhe, 1986) is a major voice in German literature, since her debut novel Ellbogen (2017), and especially since her second novel Dschinns (2022). Aydemir’s grandparents came as guest workers to Germany when her parents were teenagers. She studied German and American Studies in Frankfurt am Main. Since 2012 Aydemir has lived in Berlin and worked as an editor for the daily newspaper taz, where she deals with pop culture, literature and Turkey.

Ellbogen tells a story of escalating violence in a subway station, and of lives in and between Germany and Turkey. Dschinss, shortlisted for the Deutscher Buchpreis, is an ambitious family novel that gives full force to the voices of parents and children, husband and wive, parent and child. It consolidated Aydemir’s name as one of Europe’s leading literary voices and as a chronicler of diasporic lives; of Germany as a conflicted, sometimes hostile and at the same time inspiring country, and Turkey as a reluctant and troubled home country.