18 July 2016
When Sharon Dodua Otoo moved from Ilford to Hanover as an au pair in 1992, her family were concerned. Would a black girl from outer London cope with provincial Germany? "They were really panicked about it. ‘Don't stay too long,' they said."
Twenty-four years later Dodua Otoo not only still lives in Germany, but has just won arguably the most prestigious award in the German language, the Ingeborg Bachmann prize - for the first and only short story she has ever written in the language of her adopted homeland.
