On April 13, German Yezidi Kurdish author Ronya Othmann received the Usedom Literature Prize for her 2020 novel Die Sommer (The Summer).

The Usedom Literature Prize has been awarded since 2011 as part of the Usedom Literature Days on the island of Usedom, which is divided between Germany and Poland.

The prize includes a financial reward of 5,000 euros and also includes a one-month working stay on the island of Usedom. The prize is awarded annually by a jury, including 2018 Nobel Prize winner in Literature Olga Tokarczuk.

The main character of The Summer is Leyla, the daughter of a German mother and a Yezidi Kurd, who spends every summer in her grandparents’ village in northern Syria. When the Assad regime and ISIS lead the region into chaos, Leyla is confronted with her own family history.

“The Summer is an emotional masterpiece depicting the existential challenge that people have to overcome between two cultures. Immigrants and their children often have dramatic and, above all, broken biographies that remain invisible to the outside world,” the jury said in a statement.

“This novel describes the history of a Yezidi-German family and asks universal questions about origin and identity. Ronya Othmann’s novel reminds us of the fragility of supposed certainties and thus provides a literary lesson for the 21st century.”

“I am very happy to have received the Usedom Literature Prize. Of course, it’s always nice to have your work recognized and appreciated,” Othmann told Kurdistan Chronicle.

“I started writing the novel over ten years ago. At that time, ISIS was taking over more and more territory in Syria and Iraq. I wrote it for six years, partly in memory of the Kurdish-Yezidi village where my father grew up, the village of my grandparents. The present has inscribed itself into the novel.”

Othmann was born in Munich in 1993 and lives in Leipzig, Germany. An author and journalist, she has received multiple awards for her work, including the Mara Cassens Prize for The Summer in December 2020.