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Zoë Jenny Switzerland    PWF 2001

Zoë Jenny was born in Basel in 1974. She grew up in Greece, in the Swiss canton of Tessin and in Basel, graduating from secondary school in 1994.

Her first novel, The Pollen Room, honoured by several literary awards in 1997, was the all-time best-selling first novel for a Swiss author and won her wide acclaim. The book, which she wrote by hand, has been translated into almost thirty languages. The novel tells the story of Jo, a girl whose parents split when she is very young, and several years later she decides to search for her mother. The work draws on Romantic themes and Greek mythology. While many have speculated an autobiographical aspect to the work, Jenny explains that the work “is a novel, not an autobiography.” As she tells, “I write from my own experience and then translate it into literature.”

Jenny has written several other novels, including The Call of The Conch Shell (2000), A Fast Life (2002), The Portrait (2007), and The Sky is Changing (2010), her first novel to be written in English.

After spending time in Berlin and New York, Jenny moved to London and has lived there since 2003.