The Summers - Softcover

Othmann, Ronya

  • 4.37 out of 5 stars
    2,786 ratings by Goodreads
 
9780299341046: The Summers
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0299341046 ISBN 13: 9780299341046
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2023

Synopsis

Ronya Othmann’s debut novel narrates the coming of age of Leyla, a Yazidi–Kurdish–German girl. She spends the school year in her mother’s home country of Germany but travels every summer to her father’s home village in Syria, near the Turkish border. She knows its smells and tastes. She knows its stories. She knows where the Yazidi villagers keep their suitcases hidden, should they need to escape again. And she watches from afar, horrified, as ISIS troops move on the village, threatening the lives of her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.

Leyla’s sexual awakening proves far less traumatic than her growing disenchantment with her German classmates and friends, who appear completely indifferent to the fate of her Yazidi community. Thoughtful and poignant, The Summers addresses issues of gender, sexuality, cultural difference, politics, and identity. Othmann draws readers into multiple worlds, ultimately revealing the hopes and dreams that bind us all together when forces threaten to tear us apart. 

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About the Authors

Ronya Othmann is an author, poet, and journalist whose work deals with themes of migration, homeland, and war. She has earned numerous awards, including the Leonhard and Ida Wolf Memorial Prize of the City of Munich and the MDR Literature Prize.



Gary Schmidt, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Wright State University, is the author of The Nazi Abduction of Ganymede: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Postwar German Literature, translator of The Summers, cotranslator of What Makes a Man: Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin, and coeditor of Quertext: An Anthology of Queer Voices from German-Speaking Europe.

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Publisher
University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date
2023
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0299341046
ISBN 13 
9780299341046
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
210
Rating
  • 4.37 out of 5 stars
    2,786 ratings by Goodreads