Bio
Sharon Dodua Otoo is a Berlin-based author of both fictional and essayistic work. She was born in 1972 in London to Ghanian parents, and permanently moved to Berlin after studying German and Management Studies at Royal Holloway University of London. In 2021, she was appointed as visiting fellow and Schroeder Writer-in-Residence at Jesus College, Cambridge University.
Otoo writers in German and in English. Her first piece of work the things i am thinking while smiling politely appeared in 2012, and was translated to German by Mirjam Nuenning in 2013. The novella focuses on the experience of a Black British woman as she encounters loss, systemic racism and empowerment in the face of various key relationships falling apart. Her second novella Synchronicity handles similar issues around identity from an intergenerational perspective. It was published in German in 2014, and later joined the English literary market in 2015. In 2016, Dodua Otoo received the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for her short story ‘Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin’. This was followed by her inaugural lecture at Tage der deutschprachigen Literatur.
In 2021, she published her debut novel Ada’s Raum, a book which transcends both time and space by travelling from 15th-century Ghana to 21st-century Berlin. This fragmented narrative explores the personal through the political, shining light on matters of loss and history. Originally written and published in German, the novel gained popular attention and has since been translated to several languages. The English version, translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi, was published in spring 2023 and brought Otoo’s voice to a wider transnational audience, highlighting the presence of Black British voices beyond the bounds of contemporary Britain. The book has also been longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award. In 2022, the writer also published Gesammeltes Scheigen, a joint German-language publication with Heinrich Böll covering an experimental conversation between both authors.
Alongside her literary work, Otoo is editor of the book series Witnessed, a project aimed at amplifying Black voices in Germany, and curated the Black German-language Literature festival “Resonanzen”. The author also engages with political activism through her involvement in Black and queer organisations such as Initiative Black People, Phoenix, and ADEFRA. Gaining popularity as a public intellectual, she regularly gives lectures and speeches on societal issues such as colonialism, feminism and identity in relation to her wider interest
in literary criticism.
Selected Prizes and Nominations
Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2016
Dublin Literary Award 2024
Bibliography
Burnley, Clementine and Sharon Dodua Otoo, editors. Winter Shorts. Edition Assemblage, 2015.
Breger, Claudia. “Migration, Forced Displacement and Aesthetic Agency: Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Ada’s Raum.” The Palgrave Handbook of European Migration in Literature and Culture, edited by Corina Stan and Charlotte Sussman, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, pp. 225-240.
Calleja, Jen. “In her realm: Survival and independence across time and place in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Ada’s Room.” Rev. of Ada’s Room, by Sharon Dodua Otoo. The Times Literary Supplement, 6172, 2021.
Cha, Kyung-Ho. “Ghanaian Folk Thought, Akan Religion and an Ethic of Care in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Ada’s Raum.” German Life and Letters, vol. 77, no. 1, 2024, pp. 86-101.
Cho-Polizzi, Jon. “Between the Orbits: Translating Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Ada’s Raum.” German Life and Letters, vol. 77, no. 1, 2024, pp. 146-162.
Colvin, Sarah and Windsor, Tara Talwar. “Introduction: Sharon Dodua Otoo – Literature, Politics, Possibility.” German Life and Letters, vol. 77, no. 1, 2024, pp. 1-4.
Colvin, Sarah. “Talking Back: Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Herr Gröttrup Seztz Sich Hin and the Epistemology of Resistance.” German Life and Letters, vol. 73, no. 4, 2020, pp. 659-679.
–. “Freedom Time: Temporal Insurrections in Olivia Wenzel’s 1000 Serpentinen Angst and Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Ada’s Raum.” German Life and Letters, vol. 75, no. 1, 2020, pp. 138-165.
–. “Narrative pilgrimage and chiastic knowledge: Olivia Wenzel’s 1000 Coils of Fear and Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Ada’s Room.” Epistemic Justice and Creative Agency: Global Perspectives on Literature and Film, edited by Sarah Colvin and Stephanie Galasso, Routledge, 2022, pp. 176-197.
–. “Mother and Others in Fiction by Sharon Dodua Otoo and Olivia Wenzel.” German Life and Letters, vol. 77, no. 1, 2024, pp. 68-85.
Daldrup, Alrik. “Reorienting Knowledge of Structural Systems of Violence in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Adas Raum and Antje Rávik Strubel’s Blaue Frau.” Rewriting Identities in Contemporary Germany: Radical Diversity and Literary Interventions, edited by Selma Rezgui, Laura Marie Sturtz and Tara Talwar Windsor, 2024, pp. 187-208.
Druxes, Helga. “De-Naturalizing Gender and National Belonging: Literary and Essayistic Interventions by Otoo and Yaghoobifarah.” Gender and German Colonialism: Intimacies, Accountabilities, Intersections, edited by Elizabeth Krimmer and Chunjie Zhang, Routledge, 2024, pp. 283-305.
Galasso, Stephanie. “Vocabulary for an Unthinkable Grammar: Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Synchonicity.” German Life and Letters, vol. 77, no. 1, 2024, pp. 51-67.
Famanta, Mahamadou. “Au-delà du mot: Principes esthétiques de l’afropolitanisme dans Adas Raum de Sharon Dodua Otoo.” CompLit: Journal of European Literature, Arts and Society, vol. 2, no. 6, 2023, pp. 45-67.
Kebe-Nguema, Joseph. “Blackness and Dis/Ability in the Afrofuturist Christmas Novella Synchonicity (2015) by Sharon Dodua Otoo.” German Life and Letters, 77, no. 1, 2023, 33-50.
Köhler, Sigrid G. and Rebholz, Julia. “Imaging history/ies – narrating belonging. Epistemic extensions of narration in Olivia Wenzel and Sharon Dodua Otoo.” Acta Germanica: German Studies in Africa, vol. 51, no. 1, 2023, pp. 201-216.
Kofer, Martina. “From Colonialism to Contemporary Racism: Retelling (Male) Master Narratives from the Perspective of Marginalized Women in Sharon Odua Otoo’s Fictional Texts.” Gender and German Colonialism: Intimacies, Accountabilities, Intersections, edited by Elizabeth Krimmer and Chunjie Zhang, Routledge, 2024, pp. 260-282.
McMurtry, Áine. “Of Boiled Eggs and Rocket Science: Textual Experiments in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin.” Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 59, no. 4, 2023, pp. 598-615.
–. “Othertongues: Multilingualism, Natality and Empowerment in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Adas Raum.” German Life and Letters, vol. 77, no. 1, 2023, pp. 102-124.
Micossé-Aikins, Sandrine, and Sharon Dodua Otoo, editors. The Little Book of Big Visions. How to be an Artist and Revolutionize the World. Edition Assemblage, 2012.
Moll, Nora. “The fear of cultural belonging: Sharon Dodua Otoo’s transnational writing.” Narratives of fear and safety, edited by Kaisa Kaukiainen et al., Tampere University Press, 2020, 247-266.
Oltermann, Philip. “Black British writer wins major German-language fiction award”. The Guardian, 12 July 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/12/black-british-writer-wins-major-german-language-fiction-sharon-dodue-otoo-ingeborg-bachmann-prize.
Otoo, Sharon Dodua. Ada's Raum, S. Fischer Verlage, 2021.
–. Ada’s Room. Riverhead Books, 2023.
–. the things i am thinking while smiling politely. Edition Assemblage, 2012.
–. die dinge, die ich denke, während ich höflich lächle. Edition Assemblage, 2013.
–. Synchronicity [German edition]. Edition Assemblage, 2014.
–. Synchronicity [English edition]. Edition Assemblage, 2015.
–. ““The Speaker is using the N-Word”: A Transnational Comparison (Germany-Great Britain) of Resistance to Racism in Everyday Language.” Rassismuskritik und Widerstandsformen, edited by Karim Fereidooni and Merel El, Springer Link, 2016, pp. 291-305.
–. “Herr Gröttrup setzte sich hin.” Bachmannpreis, 2 June 2016, bachmannpreis.orf.at/stories/2773423. Accessed 7 July 2017.
–. “The Speaker is using the N-Word”: A Transnational Comparison (Germany-Great Britain) of Resistance to Racism in Everyday Language.” Rassismuskritik und Widerstandsformen, edited by Karim Fereidooni and Meral El, Springer, 2017.
–. “Whtnacig Pnait (Watching Paint).” The Little Book of Big Visions. How to be an Artist and Revolutionize the World, edited by Sandrine Micossé-Aikins and Sharon Dodua Otoo, Edition Assemblage, 2012.
–. “An Interview with Sharon Dodua Otoo.” Interview with Ella Lebau. The Oxonian Review, 22 Aug. 2022, Web.
–. “Sharon Dodua Otoo: “I talk about racism without reproducing these ugly words.” Interview wirth Alexander Wells. The Berliner, 27 March 2023, Web.
–. “When Sharon Dodua Otoo, Relatively New to Writing in German, Won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.”Interview with Idra Novey. Lit Hub, 4 March 2020, Web.
Pacyniak, Jolanta. “Things travelling through time: The role of it-narratives in Sharon Dodua
Otoo’s novel Adas Raum.” Acta Germanica: German Studies in Africa, vol. 50, no. 1, 2022: 117-225.
Van Amelsvoort, Jesse. “A Change of Perspective: Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Playful Rule-Breaking.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 41 no. 2, 2022, pp. 285-300.
Windsor, Tara Talwar. “‘Visioned Vom Idealen Geschichte-schreiben und Geschichte-machen’: Epistemic (In)Justice and Insurrection in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Historical and Memory Activism.” German Life and Letters, vol. 77, no. 1, 2024, 9-32.
Quinn, Annalisa. “Where Spirits are Remixed and Assigned to New Bodies.” Rev. of Ada’s Room, by Sharon Dodua Otoo, New York Times, 28 March 2023.
