Antje Rávik Strubel

(Germany, 1974)

Writer and translator. She grew up in East Germany, and her early works analyze the dissonances and conflicts that resulted from German reunification, especially the damages caused by ideologies and by the long shadow cast by dictatorial systems. Her later novels deal with borderline experiences, both in the social and personal environment, the question of what we consider normal, love, sex and power relations, the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and the pressure exerted by social norms.
Her publications include the novels Unter Schnee (Snowed Under, 2001), Fremd Gehen. Ein Nachtstück (2002) (Going Strange , 2002), Tupolew 134 (2004), as well as Sturz der Tage in die Nacht (When Days Plunge into Night, 2011). Her work has earned her numerous awards, her novel Kältere Schichten der Luft (Colder Layers of Air, 2007) was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize and received the Rheingau Literature Prize and the Hermann Hesse Prize. In 2019 she was awarded the Prize of the Houses of Literature. Her novel Blaue Frau (Blue Woman) was awarded the 2021 German Book Prize. Strubel has written numerous essays on socio-political and literary topics, published in the volumes Es hört nie auf, dass man etwas sagen muss (It's Impossible to Stop Saying Something, 2022) and nah genug weit weg (close enough very far away, 2023). She is also the author of travel essays about Sweden and her native region, Brandenburg. 
In March 2025 her new novel was published, Der Einfluss der Fasane (The Influence of the Pheasants) and in the autumn an essay on skiing, writing and death with the title Kein Schnee, nimmermehr (Snow, Never Again). She has translated from English and Swedish, among others, Joan Didion, Monika Fagerholm, Lucia Berlin and Virginia Woolf. 

Other activities involving the participant:

The Place We Are and Inhabit