29^th Leukerbad International Literary Festival

Authors

Lina Atfah

Germany/Syria

Line Atfah was born in Syria in 1989. She studied Arabic literature at the University of Damascus, initially worked as a journalist, and is now known for her poetry. In her writing, Lina Atfah addresses contemporary social and political crises and as a result increasingly came into conflict with the Assad regime. In 2014, she was allowed to emigrate and has lived in Germany since then.
In her poetry, Lina Atfah often engages with her bi-lingual existence. Her Arab-German poetry collection Das Buch von der fehlenden Ankunft (The Book of Non-Arrival, 2018) and Grabtuch aus Schmetterlingen (Shroud of Butterflies, 2022) both won awards. In readings, she often presents her texts in German and Arabic. Nino Haratischwili says of Lila Aftah: “She finds words for those she has lost. She searches for a language in the midst of speechlessness. She makes something tangible for me that has become abstracted in all its horror. She tells stories about her world, that are free game.”
Since 2017, Lina Atfah has been contributing to the Weiter Schreiben (Keep Writing) project, an online portal for literature from war and conflict zones.

Grabtuch aus Schmetterlingen. Poems in German and Arabic. Pendragon 2022
Das Buch von der fehlenden Ankunft. Poems. Pendragon 2018

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