Carolin Emcke

In her new book, bestselling author and Peace Prize winner Carolin Emcke reflects on how the new reality of the pandemic is changing all our lives.

In her new personal-political book Journal. Diary in Times of Pandemic, Carolin Emcke reflects on everyday life in a state of emergency. She notes nightmares or the impossible farewells to loved ones just as she analyses Europe's nationalist reflexes and the authoritarian seduction of the virus. These are subjective, philosophical notes that trace this historical caesura. Again and again, Carolin Emcke resists the tendency to look only at her own city or region, again and again she broadens the focus, reflecting on the pandemic as a global constellation. It is the unsparing and defenceless chronicle of a state of emergency that no one knows when it will end and how it will have changed us.

The journalist Carolin Emcke is one of the most important intellectual voices of our time. She has made a name for herself both as a reporter in war zones and as a critical thinker. In 2016, she received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.