Jackie Thomae

Jackie Thomae was born in Halle/Saale in 1972, grew up in Leipzig, and moved to Berlin in 1989, where she still lives today. She is a journalist, television writer and author. Thomae’s first book publication, the guidebook »Eine Frau – Ein Buch« (2008; tr: One Woman – One Book), written together with Heike Blümner, became a bestseller. »Brüder« (2019; tr: Brothers), Thomae’s second book, is a large-scale novel about the lives of two very different brothers that critics have often compared to Anglo-Saxon-style social novels. The brothers, Mick and Gabriel, do not know each other. What unites them is the fact that they are descendants of the same Senegalese father, who fathered children with two women while studying medicine in the GDR. Thomae splits the storyline between Mick’s and Gabriel’s lives equally and, by telling the story of Mick, a full-time partygoer and philanderer, in the third person from 1985 to 2000 and that of Gabriel, a star architect living in London, in the first person from 2000 onward. »Die Zeit« wrote, »That the issue of skin color and racism is more complicated than social-justice warriors think, is shown in this observationally powerful social novel.« »Brüder« was on the shortlist for the German Book Prize in 2019 and was awarded the Düsseldorf Literature Prize in 2020.