Reading Progress:

“The world is more interlinked than we think”: A conversation with Sharon Dodua Otoo

and Jane Link

Sharon Dodua Otoo first rose to prominence nearly a decade ago when her first short story in German won one of the most prestigious awards in the language, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Narrated from the perspective of an unboiled egg, “Herr Gröttrup Sits Down” puts a satirical spin on the story of the rocket scientist who worked for the Nazis. A philosophical novel slowly started taking shape as publishing houses up and down the country tripped over themselves for a chance to work with Sharon. Her debut novel, Ada’s Realm, also partly narrated by inanimate objects including a passport, follows four women named Ada in their struggle for survival. It begins with Ada, a young woman, living in a village in present-day Ghana, who has a portentous stillbirth on the eve of Portuguese colonisation. Centuries later, Ada will become the mathematical genius Ada Lovelace; then Ada, a Polish prisoner forced into prostitution in a Nazi concentration camp; and then Ada, a pregnant Ghanaian woman newly arrived in Berlin. Ada is not one woman, but all women – and she revolves in orbits, looping from one century and place to the next in an infinite revolution encompassing all of humanity.

Sharon Dodua Otoo

Why did you write Ada’s Realm in German, your second language?

I wrote this novel after unwittingly becoming a minor public figure in Germany, and I wanted to use my fifteen minutes of fame to highlight a few things. I’m very proud of how the novel works in different languages: it’s got a little bit of French, Portuguese, and Polish, as well as a variety of West African languages. I’m even prouder of how those reading it in German are confronted with characters they don’t recognise speaking a language they may have never heard before. It’s impossible to overestimate how important reading this book might be to, say, a young Black German schoolchild. It may be the first time they encounter a figure like themselves in a book that is part of Germany’s literature scene.

How has the novel landed in that scene?

It’s on library and bookstore shelves, universities and school curricula. The English language has canonical Black figures like Toni Morrison, Andrea Levy, Benjamin Zephaniah. In Germany, we’re still in the process of breaking into established networks because even though there have been Black authors writing, they have often  been strongly discouraged to celebrate that Blackness in their writing. It’s only in the last handful of years that we’ve seen Black authors writing what could be viewed as explicitly Black stories. An important historical figure was May Ayim, who wrote prolifically, and is widely known for her poetry. The Black novelists of her day largely went unpublished, and I often find myself wondering about the thousands of undiscovered manuscripts abandoned in forgotten drawers.

You chose the name ‘Ada’ because it doesn’t belong to any one culture. How did you choose the four women?

I wanted to focus on the three geographical regions I am personally connected to. My parents were born and raised in Ghana. I’m from London. My children were socialised in Germany. We tend to think of nations, languages, and histories as separate. In a museum, European history is clearly separated from African history. I wanted to show how the world is so much more deeply interlinked than we think. The final and fourth figure brings all of history and geography together and the bracelet that travels through the novel, making its way through different hands, symbolises how all histories bleed into each other.

It’s infinitely more difficult for a white person to write a Black story than it is for a Black person to write a white story.

In a nutshell, the message of the novel is that all of humanity shares an essence because we’re interconnected. As a writer, how do you feel when readers reduce an entire book to one thing?

Ada’s Realm is already being read and discussed by so many. I think, at a certain point, a writer must let go of the idea of having any control. Art in general – films, music, sculptures, paintings – is received and interpreted by the person making something of it. The real communication happens between the artwork and the person consuming it. In that sense, my readers are in a much better position to tell me what Ada’s Realm is about. I’m more interested in what happens when people interpret work than any fixed, essentialist idea of what it might be. I wrote Ada’s Realm over five years because it required so much research and was also emotionally taxing, so even my own relationship with the book has changed with time.

When you won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, you stated that it would have been very difficult for a white German to write that satirical story. Is that also true of Ada’s Realm?

I’m not really one of those people who believe white people shouldn’t write Black stories (whatever they are), but I do think that white people who write Black stories need to do their homework. It’s infinitely more difficult for a white person to write a Black story than it is for a Black person to write a white story. Why? It’s because we are saturated with white stories — whether they reach us through books, screens, or education. Black people must exist both as themselves and the other to successfully navigate society. A white man wanting to write this book would have to go looking for stories about Black women and be willing to get his hands dirty in the process.

I also feel the collectivist ethos of this novel – the idea that the entirety of the planet is in communion – is non-Western. In a sense, Ada’s Realm is a type of spiritual reading experience. Are you religious?

This is the first time I’ve been asked this question! I was raised  in the Protestant church and that faith carried me through very difficult times well into my thirties. I then lost that clarity of belief and I’m now looking, or maybe waiting, because I do believe there’s more than what we experience. I just haven’t found a religious or spiritual framework as a Black woman in solidarity for example with queer people. For now, I’m going to settle on agnostic.

SHARON DODUA OTOO is a political activist and novelist living in Berlin. After having published several newspaper articles and two novellas in English, she wrote a short story in German which was later awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, one of Germany’s most renowned literary awards. She is politically active with several civil rights organisations, including the Initiative Black People in Germany, a Black queer feminist organisation called ADEFRA, and Phoenix.

JANE LINK is the founder of bigblackbooks. She is also a publishing professional holding two master’s in literature from The University of Edinburgh and SOAS. Find her on Twitter @verybookishjane.

“The world is more interlinked than we think”: A conversation with Sharon Dodua OtooAda's Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo
Published by MacLehose on 13 April 2023
Genres: Existentialism, Translation
Pages: 320

In a small village in West Africa, in what will one day become Ghana, Ada gives birth again, and again the baby does not live. As she grieves the loss of her child, Portuguese traders become the first white men to arrive in the village, an event that will bear terrible repercussions for Ada and her kin. Centuries later, Ada will become the mathematical genius Ada Lovelace; Ada, a prisoner forced into prostitution in a Nazi concentration camp; and Ada, a young, pregnant Ghanaian woman with a new British passport who arrives in Berlin in 2019 for a fresh start. Ada is not one woman, but many, and she is all women - she revolves in orbits, looping from one century and from one place to the next. And so, she experiences the hardship but also the joy of womanhood: she is a victim, she offers resistance, and she fights for her independence.

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