Emine Sevgi Ozdamar

Born in Malatya in Turkey in 1946, Emine Sevgi Özdamar is an actress and director who for the last twenty years has been writing prize-winning prose and dramas not in her mother tongue but in German. She was a foreign worker in West Berlin, learnt acting in Istanbul, went on stage in East Berlin and has since appeared in many productions, some of international standing, and in several German films. Besides having written three plays, she has also written two collections of short stories. For her two novels Life is a Caravanserai with two Doors, through one of which I came, and through one of which I left and The Bridge of the Golden Horn she has received among other awards the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize (1991), the International Book of the Year Prize of the Times Literary Supplement (1994) and the Chamisso Prize (1999) and lives in Düsseldorf and Berlin.