Sharon Dodua Otoo is a novelist and a political activist. She writes prose, essays and is editor of the English-language book series “Witnessed”. Her novel “Ada’s Realm was translated in many languages. Otoo won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2016, the major literary festival in Germany.
In the book „Gesammeltes Schweigen“, the writer opened up new perspectives on the life and work of Heinrich Böll, the German winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1972. This confrontation was also the beginning of a joint literary exchange between Sharon Dodua Otoo and me, which manifested itself in three conversations.
First, in the form of text messages in her book „Gesammeltes Schweigen“; second, in a live Instagram discussion; and third, in an interview with the Heinrich Böll Foundation. In all three formats, we talked about how we would approach Heinrich Böll’s positions such as „Language, Conscience, Responsible Writing“ today.
