Dorothee Elmiger
Switzerland
Dorothee Elmiger, born in Wetzikon in 1985, lives in New York as an author and translator. She studied literature in Biel and Leipzig, as well as history, philosophy and political science in Lucerne and Berlin. Her debut novel Einladung an die Waghalsigen won the Kelag Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2010. Time and again, Elmiger’s texts subvert classical narrative forms and defy genre classifications.
In her latest novel, Die Holländerinnen, Dorothee Elmiger remains true to her experimental approach. To conduct research for a theatre production, the narrator travels to the jungles of Panama. An investigation into two missing tourists turns into an exploration of violence, cultural history, fear, and the monstrous in humanity. And into the question of what can still be told, what is still permitted to be told. Written entirely in indirect speech, the novel references Werner Herzog, Adorno, Kinski; as you read, images from Aguirre, the Wrath of God linger in the mind. It is a dense, multilayered novel that caused a sensation in 2025 like almost no other and was awarded the Swiss, German and Bavarian Book Prizes. A fascinating journey into the heart of darkness,” summarises the jury of the German Book Prize. Indeed.
Die Holländerinnen. Novel. Hanser 2025
Aus der Zuckerfabrik. Novel/Essay. Hanser 2020
Schlafgänger. Novel. DuMont 2014
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