Olga Grjasnova — author with roots in the USSR
Olga Grjasnova is an Azerbaijani-born German novelist who writes in German and has become one of Germany's most critically acclaimed young literary voices. Her debut novel The Man Who Knew No Fear (Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt, 2012) won the Anna Seghers Prize and established her as a major new voice in German literature.
Tracing the roots — Baku (Azerbaijan)
Born in Baku (Azerbaijan SSR) in 1984 and emigrating to Germany as a teenager, Grjasnova writes about identity, displacement, violence, and the experience of people caught between cultures. Her Russian-speaking Azerbaijani Jewish background — and her German literary career — makes her one of the most interesting examples of the post-Soviet cultural diaspora in European literature.
Baku (Azerbaijan). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.