Tag Archives: Mennonites

“Writing is how I process things”: An Interview with Miriam Toews

By Sabrina Völz and Maryann Henck

Pho­to Cred­it: Car­ol Loewen

We met Miri­am Toews at a read­ing in Ham­burg on March 26, 2019. Toews was on a book tour to pro­mote the Ger­man trans­la­tion of her sev­enth nov­el, Women Talk­ing. The nov­el is based on very dis­turb­ing events that took place between 2005 and 2008 in Bolivia. The Ger­man ver­sion, Die Aussprache, was pub­lished by Hoff­mann und Campe in 2018. For her nov­el, A Com­pli­cat­ed Kind­ness (2004), Miri­am Toews won Canada’s most pres­ti­gious lit­er­ary prize, the Gov­er­nor General’s Award. Since Toews will not be phys­i­cal­ly present at the Frank­furt Book Fair 2020 to rep­re­sent Cana­da, this year’s guest of hon­or, this inter­view will hope­ful­ly help tie us over until her next vis­it to Germany.

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