Adriana Stern Autorin

My Subjects

There are a lot of subjects that occur to me on a daily basis, and sometimes I think it's almost impossible to make every one of them into a book.
As a result of my own life story, with all the decisions I have made over the years, I am only ever capable of envisaging a small segment of the life around me. In the same way, I am sure ten authors confronted with the same subject would write ten completely different novels. That's exactly what is so wonderful and at the same time exciting about my profession.

Many well-respected authors have considered the question of how many basic ideas for a story really exist. The estimates range from 2 to 70 - the number of fundamental subjects for a novel to be based on. And yet there are thousands of different books, all of which follow these basic ideas.

I have worked in a number of very different spheres, mainly where the focus is on children and young people from completely different cultural and religious backgrounds, and as a consequence I have naturally become particularly sensitive and attentive to these aspects of life and the stories of the people involved.

And over the years it has become especially important to me to take a close and critical look at the conditions in which children and young people grow up here in Germany. My work with boys and girls who have been severely traumatized has caused a re-evaluation of psychiatric diagnosis to play an increasingly crucial part in my thinking and feeling.

This was the background to my first novel for young people, "Hammer and the Others". And since I feel an emotional affinity with young people who are homosexual, and their questions deserve answers, I wrote a second novel for young people, "Pia's Labyrinth".

Then I discovered that young people sometimes can't see any other way of coping with the difficulties they face than to take drugs, and I wrote a thriller for young people entitled "And Then Came Sunny". The lives of children and young people who have more than just a German identity - whose relatives and friends and dreams can be found in many cultures and different countries - is a subject that is very important to me, just like many other subjects that children and young people might not be able to talk about so easily but want to explore and understand a great deal better.

I would like to help these children and young people to know more about their rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to encourage them to take part in political and social decisions: to become actively involved.
I am a member of a Jewish community, and I teach children and young people there. I also work with the circus project Knallo Bonboni, with refugee children, and with a children's rights project. All this experience has a great influence on my writing.

"Hannah and the Others"

This was the background to my first novel for young people

And since I feel an emotional affinity with young people who are homosexual, and their questions deserve answers, I wrote a second novel for young people, "Pia's Labyrinth".

Then I discovered that young people sometimes can't see any other way of coping with the difficulties theyface.than to take drugs, and I wrote a thriller for young people entitled "And Then Came Sunny"

The lives of children and young people who have more than just a German identity - whose relatives and friends and dreams can be found in many cultures and different countries - is a subject that is very important to me, just like many other subjects that children and young people might not be able to talk about so easily but want to explore and understand a great deal better.

I would like to help these children and young people to know more about their rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to encourage them to take part in political and social decisions: to become actively involved.

I am a member of a Jewish community, and I teach children and young people there. I also work with the circus project Knallo Bonboni, with refugee children, and with a children's rights project. All this experience has a great influence on my writing.