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Write: Melih Uslu

Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Düsseldorf

Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Düsseldorf

Emine Sevgi Özdamar Is a turkish novelist who has won prestigious literary awards In Europe. WE ask her about Düsseldorf, where she has written her novels.

What impact has the city had on your books?
Associated with artists like Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter Düsseldorf, has a rich cultural atmosphere. The backyard of our house, which fed off the city’s energy, looked out over a small courtyard where nuns used to come and go. It was there that I turned my memories, which were spent in Turkey and seemed very poetic to me, into a novel. The tree in the courtyard was small when I was writing my first book. By the time I wrote the fifth one it was huge.

What is Düsseldorf like in summer?
I’ve always loved the city’s bridges. The endless movement of the Rhine used to mesmerize me with the strains of saxophones emanating from its banks, the meadows and the bright blue sky.  That’s what summer in Düsseldorf means to me.

Can you recommend cultural tour in the Rhine Valley?
There’s Robert Schumann in music, Heinrich Heine in literature, Friedrich Wilhelm von Schadow and Peter von Cornelius in painting… You can create dozens of tours for yourself in Düsseldorf by tracing the footsteps of the many artists who were moved by the beauty of the Rhine Valley and laid the foundations of the Romantic movement.