IN CONVERSATION
ARMIN
WÜHLE
Armin Wühle writes prose, essays and plays. He studied Creative Writing, History and Sociology in Hildesheim and Hanover. His first play Die Ungetrösteten premiered in Bregenz/Austria in 2021. For his debut novel, he did research in Bosnia and Lebanon - Getriebene was published in 2021 by S. Marix Verlag (Verlagshaus Römerweg). He received the Franz Edelmaier Scholarship for Literature and Human Rights for the novel.
He won the essay prize of Stadtkulturnetzwerk Bayern on the topic of cultural work and climate change. In 2023, he became city writer of Goslar/Germany. In 2024, he was a resident at the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB). Besides his writing career, he works for an association that provides care for traumatized refugees.
He is currently working on his second novel.
Go to Armin's website.
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Sindhu Rajasekaran: As you know, my knowledge of the German language is very basic, but I love reading German philosophy in translation. At several points, translators leave some words untranslated - explaining that the word is too complex to translate linearly, like Heidegger's Lichtung, for instance. You write primarily in German, and I was wondering what your thoughts are on translation. Do you find translations of your work reflective of the original German? Do you think there is mystery and romance in translation? Or miscommunication? Possibility?
Armin Wühle: It’s all of the above. When I receive translations of my texts, I sometimes feel that certain words are too vague or imprecise. However, less precise doesn’t necessarily mean less accurate. The image is created in the reader's mind anyway. Often, authors want to capture reality so concretely as if it was lying on the table like an object. Once you let go of this idea, translation becomes less threatening.
Another thought: I recently moderated a reading of “Poems from Guantánamo.” These poems were written by inmates of the US torture prison. The originals were written in Arabic and Farsi and translated by official interpreters after being released by the CIA. So, there were no literary translators at work, let alone people who were familiar with Persian poetry, for example. This already damaged English translation was then translated into German. How many translations can a text withstand? And yet there were images and sentences that touched me deeply. Some images remain, no matter what the translation does to them.
Tell me about Rue d'Armenie. To quote from the exposé: Is this '[a] dystopian vision of the future? Not at all... We’re right in the middle of it. The only question remaining: How do we respond to the upheavals of current times? "That's what life is all about. All the time. Do you let the wave carry you away? Do you stand your ground? Or – and this is my secret advice – do you ride it?"' Rue d'Armenie won the Drama Prize for Politics and Human Rights at Nuremberg in 2025. The play looks into how forms of resistance and solidarity are formed in the face of brutal oppression. What inspired you to write this text?
I spent some time in Lebanon in 2017, working as a journalist on topics such as Syrian refugees and the situation of queers in the Middle East. The text is strongly influenced by this research. Beirut also has the eponymous Rue d'Armenie, a nightlife district.
Nevertheless, it was important to me not to provide any specific location in the text—we never learn the name of the city, the characters are only referred to as “the man” or “the woman”—because it is not about depicting a Lebanese reality. These are global struggles. At its core, it is always the same: the struggle of the powerless against the powerful; in my play, this is represented by a refugee, a queer person, and a political activist, who at the beginning of the play (literally) all get punched in the face.
And that is exactly our reality at the moment – Trumpism is spreading, and the illiberal right is on the rise worldwide. The texts we wrote a few years ago as dystopias or satirical exaggerations have been overtaken by reality. I already felt this way with my first novel, “Getriebene”. This process has accelerated rapidly in recent years. We are already living in dystopian conditions, and just like the characters in my play, we have to ask ourselves how we are going to deal with it.
I loved how the characters in Rue d'Armenie tell (each) others' stories at the beginning. Whilst reading the text and playing out the scenes in my head, some dialogues, imagery, and ideas stood out to me. Let us talk about what drew you to these themes, scenes, words, etc. Tell me a little about the 'cotton candy' reference.
'The cotton candy is pink and wrapped in plastic. It dangles from the stick, and when the boy fills his lungs with air and his—... The boy walks through the promenade, still bustling even at this late hour. There’s almost a melody in his calls, and you can tell the words... aren't really words anymore—they’ve worn...'
I witnessed this scene myself in Amman, Jordan. Just like in Lebanon, there were many Syrian refugees living in Jordan at the time. I observed two refugee boys selling cotton candy on the street and arguing about who was allowed to sell there. It was very painful to watch. Circumstances often lead to marginalized people kicking down rather than kicking up.
What I found so absurd about this image is that this pink cotton candy looks so innocent. It’s so sweet, has hardly any weight – melts immediately on the tongue. Something so light in itself becomes the cause of a bloody nose, and even more, a threat to an entire existence.
At one point, the text asks whether the boys ever thought of eating the cotton candy themselves instead of selling it for money. Unfortunately, I don't think so. And that is a great injustice that we need to talk about.
Besides the boy, the play features the man and the woman. The man was dancing in an illegal gay bar, the woman is dealing with local corruption through her art. All three must fear being arrested soon. It was important to me that they don't tell their story themselves; it is told by one of the other three. Because all these struggles are intertwined.
When you write plays, do you think of the imagery and scenematic aesthetics first, or do you think of dialogues and plotlines? I've always been fascinated to know how different writers approach this. I think in my case images come first, even when I'm writing prose fiction. Wonder how your mind works.
Same for me – images come first. Or a set of images, which makes a scene. And from that point, everything else evolves.
But it doesn’t necessarily happen on paper, it happens in my head. Before I start writing a novel, around 80% of the scenes are already in my head, and the rest is filled with work-in-progress. It’s like when you’re short-sighted and don’t wear glasses. The rough outlines can already be seen, but in the process of writing, everything becomes clear and detailed.
Writing plays is very similar, though I already think about the actual performance when writing, and that shapes the storytelling a lot. Plus, rhythm and dialogues deserve an even greater significance when writing plays. For me, it’s a fun relief from the monotony of yearlong novel-writing.
A set photo of Armin's play "Die Ungetrösteten."
Let us talk about your upcoming novel, "Mala Visión." I've read a couple of chapters and I'm drawn to the existential angst and sense of impending gloom in it - I write a lot about that too. When we met in Vancouver, you'd told me the premise of the novel, which I found interesting - as someone who needs glasses to see, I felt immediately drawn to Rafa! Please tell me more about how you got to writing this novel and what you hope it makes people think about.
In the middle of the Mexican wilderness, Rafa is attacked and loses his glasses. He is not far from the nearest village, but with over 10 diopters, his entire world dissolves into colorful patches.
How thin is the thread on which our health and safety depend! I am severely nearsighted myself, and while hiking I often thought that I’d be pretty screwed if I lost my glasses now. Losing your glasses shakes the very foundations of your sense of security—from one moment to the next, you can no longer function as the person you were before. People who have been ghosted report the same feeling. This surprising, unexplained break in contact with a loved one knocks you off your feet—especially when it happens after many years of partnership. I tell both of these stories in my novel.
I wanted to tell a story about loss—both physical and mental—and also address modern humans' relationship with nature. Fortunately, Rafa has some strong friends by his side and a will to survive that, in the face of existential threat, also has a cathartic effect.
We also briefly spoke about how it is crucial that queer literature finds representation in the mainstream. In the English publishing world too this happens, where queer lit is slotted as "the other" or as something to be marketed for Pride month. It's not often considered as integral to literature. Tell me about the German literary scene, and how queer literature features in that universe.
There are several specifically queer publishers in German-speaking countries, such as Albino and März, which is great. We need literary spaces where our themes and perspectives can find a place without a “straight gaze.” At the same time, I want to see queer main characters in the mainstream as well. There are indeed novels with queer main characters published by major publishers, but these are rare because they don't “sell”. Queer supporting characters are not a problem—I even feel that they have become a plus, bringing some “color” and “diversity” into play. But a queer main character remains a different thing. That's crazy, considering that we queers are constantly making this transfer—and isn't literature a constant transfer? After all, no one writes down our own exact lives.
To take a line from Rue d'Armenie 'How do we respond to the upheavals of current times?' The world seems to be falling apart. Sometimes, I wonder about the work I do. About spending so much time with words in a world so brutal and violent. Tell me how you ride the waves. I am bipolar, so sometimes I feel like I'm sinking, and at other times like I'm on top of it. Don't know which is real.
Maybe both are equally real. On my wall hangs a quote from Austrian author Theresa Präauer: “I feel such anger toward everything and at the same time such love for everything, I can't even tell you.” This simultaneity of extreme opposites is what defines our time—perhaps life in general.
And well, how do we respond to the world falling apart? We basically have two options. We can decide to join forces and fight together—or to make a deal with those in power, just like the kiosk owner in my play. He is a powerless nobody who works 23 hours a day in his kiosk (and cleans his shop in the remaining hour). He decides to cooperate with those in power, to “ride the wave”. Understandable, but no less bad for that. Look at all the CEOs in the US who were talking about diversity and equality and waving the rainbow flag a few years ago, and now under Trump don't want to hear anything about it. I didn't expect anything else from the CEOs of this world, but the marginalized should please support each other.
You're also an award-winning essayist. My final question to you is: what's your favourite genre to write in? Do you like to experiment? Push the boundaries? Do you think about "form" when you write?
When I've been working on a novel for three years, the free forms of theatre texts become tempting again. And when I've written an associative, stream of consciousness-like theatre text, the structured argumentation of an essay becomes interesting again. It's a wave motion (all these waves everywhere...).
But sometimes I get carried away by an idea, by an image, and the appropriate genre follows. That's how it is sometimes with texts: they take you by the hand, and in the end you're surprised where they've taken you. For example, I didn't intend to write a novel from the first-person perspective—I don't even like first-person narrators really, and I had even less practice writing it. But sometimes the text is just smarter than we are.