Juli Zeh (, Julia Barbara Finck, née Zeh; born 30 June 1974) is a German writer and judge. She is known for novels such as The Method (2009), Unterleuten (2016) and About People (2021).

Life

Juli Zeh is the daughter of the lawyer . She studied law in Passau and Leipzig, passing the Zweites Juristisches Staatsexamen – comparable equivalent to the U.S. bar exam – in 2003, and holds a doctorate in international law from Saarland University. She also has a degree from the German Institute for Literature Leipzig. She is a member of Pen Centre Germany and the Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg.

Since January 2019, Zeh is an honorary judge at the Constitutional Court of Brandenburg. She was one of the first signers of the Open letter on the German position regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine in April 2022, who demanded not to support Ukraine with arms in order to "prevent a third world war".

Besides her literary work, she also publishes articles and essays for Die Zeit, Der Spiegel and FAZ. Alongside Gabor Steingart, she presents a literary podcast for the Pioneer AG.

Literary Work

Zeh's first published novel was Eagles and Angels, which received the 2002 Deutscher Bücherpreis for best debut novel. It was translated into 35 languages and is settled in the world of the drug mafia internationally active lawyers. The novel has a legal focus, addressing international law.

She travelled through Bosnia-Herzegovina with her dog in 2001, which became the basis for the travel diary Die Stille ist ein Geräusch (2002). Among her other books are Das Land der Menschen, Dark Matter, Kleines Konversationslexikon für Haushunde, Gaming Instinct, Ein Hund läuft durch die Republik (2004), Decompression and The Method. In 2009 she published Corpus Delicti: ein Prozess, following the play from 2007 of the same name.

The social novel Unterleuten, published in 2016, is settled in a fictional village in Brandenburg 20 years after the reunification of Germany. The self-help book Dein Erfolg by the ficitonal consultant Manfred Gortz, mentioned in the novel, was published by Juli Zeh under the pseudonym in 2015, which sparked allegations of plagiarism. In 2020, the three-part film adaptation Unterleuten – Das zerrissene Dorf (Unterleuten – The Torn Village) was broadcast on ZDF.

The reoccuring motif of the duality between the village and thecity can be found in her works Über Menschen (2021) and Zwischen Welten (2023), the latter was published with Simon Urban.

In an interview with Erik Schilling she stated that her literary works are not explicitly political, but morally and socially relevant. A novel should not be one-sided and remain open to all possible interpretations.

Personal life

Zeh is married and has two children. Since 2017, she has been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Selected bibliography

1. Novels

1. Other

References

Further reading

External links

• An interview about her social commitment, recent translated books and her recent play, , Trouw, September 2008

• Interview about , April 2011

• Article about the translation of , April 2012

• Juli Zeh in: NRW Literatur im Netz