The Dutch Foundation for Literature welcomes Julia Franck (Berlin, 1970) to Amsterdam, where she will be staying as a writer-in-residence from July 15th to August 17th. Franck is an important voice in contemporary German literature and has received multiple awards for her work.
Photo Julia Franck: Mathias Bothor
Julia Franck made her debut in 1997 with The New Cook (Der neue Koche) and gained international recognition with her novel The Blind Side of the Heart (Die Mittagsfrau) in 2007, which was awarded the German Book Prize and translated into 40 languages. The film adaptation of the book is expected to be released in the autumn of 2023.
Twentieth century German history plays an important role in many of Franck’s books. The Blind Side of the Heart, for example, tells the story of a mother who flees to West Germany in 1945, leaving her young son behind at a train station to never return. After_ Back to Back_ (Rücken an Rücken) in 2011, a family history set in divided Germany of the 1950s and 1960s, Franck wrote her next book more than a decade later, in 2021. _In Worlds Apart _(Welten Auseinander) Franck tells the compelling story of herself and her sisters, who were taken to West Germany by their mother during the height of the Cold War.
In 2022, Franck received the Schiller Memorial Prize for her body of work. In 2023, Franck, alongside Rainer Wieland, became publisher at publishing house Die Andere Bibliothek. All of her novels have been published in Dutch translation by De Wereldbibliotheek. During her stay in Amsterdam, Franck will be working on a new novel and conducting research, as the story has some ties to the Netherlands.
Read more about the Amsterdam writers residence of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
