How We Desire

Emcke, a former war correspondent, turns her reporter’s eye to her own experiences, exploring questions about identity, sexuality and love. Emcke draws back the veil on how we experience desire, no matter what our sexual orientation. What if, instead of discovering our sexuality only once, during puberty, we discover it again later—and then again, after that? What if our sexuality reinvents itself every time the object of our desire changes? Emcke also examines how prejudice against homosexuality has survived its decriminalization in the west.

Carolin Emcke worked as a war correspondent for Der Spiegel for fifteen years. She reported from war and crisis zones including the Gaza Strip, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Her reportage is critically acclaimed in Germany, where she has previously published a number of books. In 2016 she received the German Book Trade’s Peace Prize, an award previously won by Svetlana Alexievich, Susan Sontag and Margaret Atwood.