Michi Strausfeld
Germany
Born in Recklinghausen in 1945, Michi Strausfeld is a luminary in the German-language publishing industry. For more than thirty years, she shaped the Iberian and Latin American list for Suhrkamp Verlag before moving to Fischer in 2008. Since 2016, she has been a freelance writer, editor, and literary mediator. She has received multiple awards for her engagement with and advocacy of this literature in the Germanosphere. Michi Strausfeld lives in Berlin and Barcelona.
In Die Kaiserin von Galapagos (The Empress of the Galapagos), Strausfeld tells the story of the Germans who sought their fortune in Latin America: “Swindlers, eccentrics, artists, merchants flairing fortunes, a utopian with an imperial crown, scientists and scholars searching for traces of Alexander von Humboldt.” Only later did immigrants come in large numbers: emigres fleeing starvation at home, Jews who would have been murdered, but also their Nazi tormentors who hid here after 1945.
As an editor, Michi Strausfeld improved hundreds of books: so she knows how to tell a story. And she whets the appetite for more. In the Tages-Anzeiger, Martin Ebel wrote about Gelbe Schmetterlinge und die Herren Diktatoren. Lateinamerika erzählt seine Geschichte (Yellow Butterflies and the Dictators: Latin America writes its History): “This compendium is an irresistible invitation to read, read, read.”
Die Kaiserin von Galapagos. Deutsche Abenteuer in Lateinamerika. Berenberg 2025
Gaumenfreuden. Wagenbach 2023
Gelbe Schmetterlinge und die Herren Diktatoren. Lateinamerika, erzählt seine Geschichte. S. Fischer 2019, TB 2022
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