Literature & Film for the “International Day of Migrants”: Elbows – in German Language

Irmi Horn

The International Day of Migrants was created in 2000 by the United Nations (UNO) and on the date 18. December.

Irmi Horn reads in the series Women Empowerment from the novel Elbows, published in 2017 by Hanser.

A warm-hearted and wild debut novel by Fatma Aydemir: She is seventeen. She was born in Berlin. Her name is Hazal Akgündüz. Actually, she could become an ordinary adult. Only that her parents who immigrated from Turkey feel foreign in Germany. And that Hazal makes fatal mistakes in her search for home. First it’s just a stolen lipstick. Then blunt violence. When the police are after her, Hazal flees to Istanbul, where she has never been before. Warm and wild, Fatma Aydemir talks about the many people who live between cultures and nations, and her search for a place in the world. You want to help Hazal, you want to run through the night with her, you want to know what happens next with her and with all of us.

Fatma Aydemir © Sibylle Fendt

Fatma Aydemir was born in Karlsruhe in 1986, she lives in Berlin. Hanser published her debut novel “Elbow” in 2017, for which she received the Klaus Michael Kühne Prize and the Franz Hessel Prize.