Press release – Colchester writer publishes first novel

A lifetime’s love of the English language has led a German-born woman to write her first novel.

Silvia Rahmani, who was born in Germany, but now lives in Colchester, has published “Hexe”, a dark, poignant and sometimes shocking fantasy story, set in Germany at the end of the Second World War. It tells of a 10-year-old girl living with her grandmother, who witnesses the horrors of racism, hatred and bitter social differences which have festered during the long years of conflict.

Germany in 1945 is beaten, its people downtrodden and starving. Old scores between families and communities need to be settled and violence flares easily.

Against this backdrop, young Frigg learns from her beloved grandmother the mysteries of the spirit world that guide them through the post-war backlash against her family.

Silvia, who writes under the name Skadi Winter, says much of the subject matter of her first novel is autobiographical. She explains: “I belong to the so-called German Nachkriegsgeneration (after-war-generation), born only eight years after the end of the Second World War. I grew up with a constant feeling of shame, belonging to a people stigmatized by the rest of the world as Nazis. The question of something like a ‘collective guilt’ still occupies my mind and wriggles its way into my books.

“While many of my fellow Germans of that age had to learn Russian in the eastern section of Germany, I was fortunate to learn English, because I grew up in the western section, a little garrison town near the French border. That was where my love-story with the English language began.”

Against this background, as the child of a French mother (a graphic designer) and a German engineer father, Silvia learned tolerance at a young age. She read her first book aged five and has continued to read and write ever since. She speaks four languages fluently and believes words are “the ultimate tool to communicate as human beings”.

Silvia is mother to four sons and grandmother to eight children from four different nations. She has worked in various sections of the health service, in Germany and England, where she has lived for 12 years. She loves gardening and dogs.