Feridun Zaimoğlu

Feridun Zaimoğlu — Biography

Of Turkish descent, Feridun Zaimoğlu writes and makes visual art in Germany. His books return again and again to the difficulties faced by the second and third generations of Turkish immigrants there. With a blunt, uncompromising style that brings the street speech of young migrants into literature, he is counted among the distinctive voices of contemporary German writing; his most recent novel, Sohn ohne Vater (2025), made the German Book Prize longlist.

Born in Bolu in 1964, he came to Germany with his parents in 1965. He lived in Berlin and Munich until 1985, then studied medicine and art in Kiel, where he still lives. His breakthrough book Kanak Sprak (1995) recorded the everyday language of young Turks in Germany and became an inspiration for the anti-racist initiative Kanak Attak. Abschaum (1997, filmed in 2000 as Kanak Attack), Koppstoff, German Amok and Leinwand followed. In Leyla (2006) he took a female viewpoint for the first time, depicting life in a Turkish village; Liebesbrand, Hinterland, Ruß, Siebentürmeviertel and Evangelio came later. Plays written with Günter Senkel have been staged in Munich, Düsseldorf, Cologne and at the Salzburg Festival, and his essays and criticism have appeared in papers such as Die Zeit and Die Welt.

His honours include the Civis Media Prize, the Friedrich Hebbel Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Grimmelshausen Prize, the Corine Prize and the Berlin Literature Prize (2016). He was island poet on Sylt in 2003, a Villa Massimo fellow in 2005, taught the Tübingen poetics lectureship in 2007, and held the Brothers Grimm professorship in 2023.