INTERVIEW - Anna Prizkau: «I prefer to write about things I know well: smoking, drinking, lying, having sex, loving»

Ms. Prizkau, in your debut novel, you tell stories of love and hate, lies and truths, through the example of three women devoted to each other and, occasionally, a few men who are needed for their sexual release—all inmates of an insane asylum. Peace and clarity seem to be found only in monologues with the Pink Flamingo. Is this a reflection of the society we live in?

Personally, I don't even find peace and moments of clarity when I'm talking to myself. Seriously and honestly: I simply wanted to tell a story that has a beginning, a bit of plot, and an end. And yes, perhaps you can see something of our beautiful, miserable affluent society in my book. And perhaps you can also hear the approaching rumble of a new, dark future that unfortunately awaits us. But that's only because I'm constantly observing people. And what I see—all the time, everywhere—are people searching for happiness without really wanting to find it. Which, in the end, is beautiful, sad, understandable, in other words, simply deeply human. But I really didn't want to reflect anything in my novel, and I certainly didn't want to say anything social or political.

Why? Can't you write good literature if you have a political agenda?

No, and for two reasons. First, it makes no sense at all, because anyone with an agenda wants to change something. But literature, even the greatest, even the very greatest, can't change the world. At its best, it can put experiences we all know into words and sentences we previously lacked; it can show us familiar things in a new way. And it can survive – censorship, dictatorships, and oppression. That should be enough for a writer!

And the second reason?

I don't know of a single successful novel that follows a political agenda. Because when you're an activist, you think you know who's good and who's bad. But that has nothing to do with reality, nothing to do with life. And how boring is that if the good guys are only good and the bad guys are only bad?

The protagonist of your novel is often evil. Her name is Anna and she's of Eastern European background, but she's lived in Germany for a long time and is a chain smoker—like you. Is this a largely autobiographical novel?

No, no! But yes, it's easier for me to describe things I know myself: smoking, drinking, lying, having sex, making love. And yet, writers, at least the ones I respect and read, never write about what they have experienced themselves. They write about what they want to experience, or about what they are afraid they will experience. Dostoyevsky never killed either, although he might have wanted to on occasion.

Which literary heyday would you have liked to have lived in? Expressionism? New Objectivity? The postwar period?

Realism, of course! Clear language, little morality, and a hint of Napoleon still in the background. And every time a carriage arrives far too late to deliver an important letter, so the great catastrophe can begin. There's nothing better for a writer.

While there's no carriage in your book, there's a bus full of brutalized soldiers who are clearly in need of treatment. Did your experiences as a war reporter in Ukraine for a major German newspaper influence this?

No. My novel is about German soldiers. I know some of them. Beautiful, brave, intelligent soldiers. I have complete trust in them and respect them and their work. Yet, despite all their foreign deployments, these women and men live a safe everyday life in Germany. That is something that separates them forever from the soldiers I met in Ukraine. I mean the daily experience of death. There is nothing literary about that, there is nothing poetic about it. It also separates me from my Ukrainian friends who are not fighting. From the civilians. Even though they, too, fight every day. Because since Russia's invasion, every day has ultimately been a struggle for everyone in Ukraine. And you, every reader, and I myself will never comprehend, feel, or understand the pain of the people there. Because experiences of pain cannot, ever be put into words.

How has the close confrontation with the war in Ukraine shaped you?

Crucial. Because war is something you—even as a reporter—feel completely, massively, physically. You've probably seen the ruins of houses in Kharkiv, Kherson, or Kyiv on the news many times, haven't you?

Yes, of course.

Well, I have to tell you, television, these videos, these images, have hardly anything to do with reality. When you're standing there yourself, in front of such massive ruins, after a bombardment, after shelling, there's something there that you can't understand from a photo or a video. Because it's steaming. It smells of broken sewers, smells of blood.

What traces did this leave behind?

In me? I can only quote Vitali Klitschko, my great boxing idol. I interviewed him once in Kyiv two or three years ago, and when I asked him how he was doing, he said something like this: "Do you have two legs? Do you have two arms? Then you're fine!" That was the smartest thing a boxer or mayor has ever told me. That's why I'm telling you now: "What kind of marks?" I'm fine!

You'll soon be going on a reading tour through Germany. Do you think women will be in the majority at your appearances, as is the case among literature enthusiasts in general?

Of course. Probably. And that's great. I love women!

Do women have it easier in literary life than men?

I think so, in our time, in this era. Things were, of course, very different back then. For example, I admire Joyce Carol Oates, Carson McCullers, Irmgard Keun, and Maeve Brennan. They were brilliant, great women of literature who, compared to their male contemporaries like Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, Stefan Zweig, and Truman Capote, barely exist in general education or in literary name-dropping. But as far as our time, as far as the present is concerned, everything has fortunately changed.

Are you woke?

I don't know what woke means. I only know: I love the German language. I moved to Germany when I was seven – without a single German word in my head. I first learned German by observation. I watched the people who were strangers to me at the time, and little by little, I understood them, and I fell in love with their language. But asterisks and colons, which now often hang between syllables, remain foreign to me. I can neither see nor feel them. I simply see people.

Which German-speaking writer would you not want to meet if you were locked up in your sanatorium?

If you're talking about the dead, then it's Joseph Roth. Because Roth drank too much, even for my imaginary sanatorium, even for me personally. His company wouldn't be good for my health.

What can we expect from you next?

I'm going to write. Everyone says the second book is the hardest. But I think it's the third. Because when I do that, I always think of the great German publisher Siegfried Unseld. He said that you only become a writer with your third book. That scares me. But I once heard somewhere: If you live in fear, you die in shame. And I don't want that.

Anna Prizkau: Women in the Sanatorium. Novel. Rowohlt-Verlag, Hamburg 2025. 304 pp., Fr. 34.90.