Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews (2013)

Miriam Toews (born May 21, 1964 in Steinbach , Manitoba ) is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist. She lives and works in Winnipeg . In 2008 she was awarded the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for her novel The Flying Trautmans , which she received again in 2014 for All My Puny Sorrows .

life and work

Toews studied film and journalism at the University of Manitoba and the University of King's College , Halifax, and has worked as a freelance journalist for the press and radio. She gained international fame with her novel A Complicated Kindness (2004). The novel stayed on Canada's bestseller lists for over a year and won the Governor General's Award for Fiction , Canada's most important literary prize. The novel A Complicated Kindness is about the 16-year-old daughter of Russian mennonites who dreams of breaking out of the confines of her small-town world to hang out with Lou Reed in the slums of New York City . In 2005, this novel is titled A complicated act of love in Berlin Verlag also published in German. In her work, the translator Christiane Buchner also attached great importance to the correct rendering of the numerous quotations in the language of the Russian Mennonites ( Plautdietsch ).

In the fall of 2006 Toews took part in the filming of the film Stellet Licht by Carlos Reygadas . In addition to Maria Pankratz from Espelkamp, ​​Toews is one of the two (lay) leading actresses in what is probably the first movie in Plautdietsch.

Reception with the Mennonites

Mennonites take on Miriam Toews' novel A Complicated Act of Love in different ways. While it is little known in more conservative circles, the novel has been recognized by others as the author's considerable literary examination of her Mennonite origins.

Works

• Summer of My Amazing Luck. 1996
  • Summer of my life. Translated by Katrin Behringer, Berlin Verlag , Berlin 2012 ISBN 978-3-8333-0798-0
• A Boy of Good Breeding. 1998
  • Small town gossip. Übers. Christiane Buchner, Berlin Verlag, 2007 ISBN 978-3-8270-0731-5
• A Complicated Kindness. 2004
  • A complicated act of love. Übers. Christiane Buchner, Berlin Verlag, 2005 ISBN 3-8270-0598-1
• Swing Low: A Life. 2005
  • Mr T., the sparrow and the worries of the world. My father's life. Translated by Christiane Buchner, Martina Tichy. Berlin Verlag, 2013 ISBN 978-3-8270-1131-2
• The Flying Troutmans. 2008
  • The flying Trautmans. Übers. Christiane Buchner, Berlin Verlag, 2008 ISBN 978-3-8270-0807-7
• Irma Voth. 2011
  • Little bird, beating heart. Übers. Christiane Buchner, Berlin Verlag, 2011 ISBN 978-3-8270-1029-2
• All My Puny Sorrows. 2014
  • The glass piano. Novel. Translated by Monika Baark. Berlin Verlag, 2016 ISBN 382701249X
• Women Talking. 2018
  • The pronunciation . Novel. Translated by Monika Baark. Hoffmann and Campe , Hamburg 2019 ISBN 978-3-455-00510-3

Awards

• Governor General's Award for A Complicated Kindness
• Giller Prize (nominated) for A Complicated Kindness
• McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award for Swing Low: A Life
• Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction for Swing Low: A Life
• McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award for A Boy of Good Breeding
• Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humor (nominated) for Summer of My Amazing Luck
• John Hirsch Award for Summer of My Amazing Luck
• National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Humor
• A Complicated Kindness was selected as the winner by Canada Reads 2006 , an initiative by songwriter, poet and editor John K. Samson .
• 2014: Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for All My Puny Sorrows

Web links

• Literature by and about Miriam Toews in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and reviews of works by Miriam Toews at perlentaucher.de
• Biography on the website of the Berlin International Literature Festival
• Miriam Toews: It's a Mennonite Thing, Globe and Mail , April 8, 2011
• The main thing is gone - a portrait of the Canadian writer Miriam Toews. Deutschlandradio Kultur , September 8, 2011
• Review: The glass piano
• Giessener Electronic Library: Julia Michael, Narrating communities: constructing and challenging Mennonite Canadian identities through narrative, Diss. Phil. University of Giessen 2017, therein Voice, Space and Agency as Feminist Narrative Practices in Miriam Toews' "Irma Voth", pp. 144-157

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christoph Wiebe: From the failure of a 500-year experiment. Miriam Toews' novel A Complicated Act of Love. In: Mennonitischen Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter . Vol. 63, Bolanden 2006, ISBN 3-921881-24-2 , pp. 153-172.
2. ^ Tichy in the translator database of the VdÜ , 2019
3. ↑ Baark in the translator database of the VdÜ, 2019