Black German-Language Fiction
Black German literature has a long history and it ranges from poetry and autobiographies to academic and activist writings. Yet even today, Black German authors are still less visible, especially when it comes to fiction. So, here is a list of our favorite Black German-language fiction:
Biskaya (2016) by SchwarzRund
(no English translation yet)
The novel follows young musician Tue, who is constantly critically assessing herself and her Berlin environment. With her band, she is part of the Hamburg School, which traditionally tends to be white and male. As a Black, queer woman, Tue transgresses the framework that the majority white public is used to. She is also undergoing a process of politicisation herself, in which she uncovers some secrets about her family and her past. In form and content, Biskaya is an expression of the search for an Afropolitan-aesthetic answer to structural injustices.
Brothers (2024) by Jaeckie Thomae
(translated by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp)
In the novel we meet two German half-brothers navigating their manhood, reluctant to centralise the colour of their skin as a way of defining how they see themselves and the decisions they make. Mick and Gabriel don’t know each other and they couldn’t be more different: Mick teeters through the Berlin of the nineties. With no boundaries and no rules, the years blur into one big party. Gabriel is a careerist who moves from Leipzig to London and starts a family. The two stories only intersect towards the end. With a light touch Thomae explores the fates of the two sons of a Senegalese student in the GDR.
1000 Coils of Fear (2022) by Olivia Wenzel
(translated by Priscilla Lane)
Wenzel’s debut novel is told, for the most part, in the form of dialogic call-and-response. Some of the events are told in real-time, while others are flashbacks. The unnamed protagonist lives in Berlin, and is sometimes in Thuringia, sometimes in the USA, in Morocco or Vietnam. No matter where she finds herself, she is always grappling with her identity and her accumulated anxieties. The novel deals with the socio-cultural experiences of being Black in a predominantly white society, and growing up as a Black child of a white mother in the GDR. It is an enriching book that takes a critical look at German society.
Ada’s Realm (2023) by Sharon Dodua Otoo
(translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi)
This novel will let you meet Ada in her different iterations through the ages. The first encounter with Ada has her in Totope in West Africa (in today’s Ghana) in 1459, as Portuguese merchant-sailors arrive in search of loot to steal to make them rich men back in Europe. Further stops lead through the centuries to today’s Berlin, where she is struggling to find a place of her own in the carnivorous (and mostly racist) rental market of Berlin. In this and other ways, Otoo is able to elegantly craft resonances between her various eras and settings, and political questions that are very much pertinent to our present moment. Ada’s Realm is ambitious and epic in scope, gripping and intelligent in execution, and somehow both unforgiving and funny.
Issa (2024) by Mirrianne Mahn
(no English translation yet)
Issa, who lives in Frankfurt am Main, is pregnant and desperate. No longer knowing what to do she flies to see her grandmother and great-grandmother in Cameroon to gain clarity. In her debut novel, Mahn uses this narrative frame to tell the story of Issa’s search for herself and the women who came before her in simple, no-frills language. In doing so, Mahn covers an entire century and illustrates the effects that German colonialism had on Cameroonian women in particular and today’s repercussions.