Anila Wilms is an Albanian writer living in Germany. Wilms was born in Tirana and grew up in the Albanian port of

Durrës Durrës ( , ; sq-definite, Durrësi) is the second most populous city of the Republic of Albania and seat of Durrës County and Durrës Municipality. It is located on a flat plain along the Albanian Adriatic Sea Coast between the mouths of ...

. On the maternal side, she comes from a family of rich and politically influential beys who were expropriated and disempowered after 1945 as enemies of the communist regime. From 1989 to 1993 she studied history and philology at the

University of Tirana The University of Tirana ( sq, Universiteti i Tiranës, abbreviated UT) is a public university located at the central borough of Tirana 10 in Tirana, Albania. It was established as the ''State University of Tirana'' in 1957 through merging of ...

. As a DAAD scholarship holder, she came to Berlin in 1994, and has been living there ever since as a writer and publicist. In August 2012, she published her first novel in German ''Das albanische Öl oder Mord auf der Straße des Nordens'' (''The Albanian Oil or Murder on the Road of the North'') in Berlin, based on historical research. The novel is set in the 1920s and is described as "an exotic, burlesque episode from the history of the young Albanian nation in the form of a political thriller". She first wrote the book in Albanian and published it in Tirana in 2007. In 2013 she was awarded the

Adelbert von Chamisso Prize The Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (German ''Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Preis'') was a German literary award established in 1985, given to a work whose author's mother tongue is not German, as was the case for Adelbert von Chamisso. It was offered by the Ro ...

for her writing.

References

Albanian women novelists Albanian novelists Albanian women writers 1971 births Living people Writers from Tirana Albanian emigrants to Germany 20th-century Albanian women writers 21st-century Albanian women writers 20th-century Albanian writers 21st-century Albanian writers {{Albania-writer-stub