John Green [ USA ]

John Green, recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, was born in Indianapolis, where he now lives with his wife, in 1977. Ever since the publication of his novel »Looking for Alaska« (2005), he has been considered among the great new voices of English-speaking literature for young adults. Green grew up in Florida, attended boarding school in Alabama, and studied English and religion in Ohio. He worked as a student chaplain at a children’s hospital and as a journalist before he turned to writing.

The American media has compared Green’s début to Salinger’s »The Catcher in the Rye«. The loner Miles, who collects the last words of celebrities, goes to boarding school in Culver Creek in order to experience the »great unknown«, which Rabelais mentioned on his deathbed: light-heartedly hanging out, smoking in secret in the woods, sex and absurd philosophical discussions. Then he encounters the incomparable Alaska, whom the author constructs as »the ›ideal girl‹, upon whom teenage boys can project their fantasies, and as an iridescently drawn borderline personality«. Green narrates the story with a fast-paced tempo, self-confidence and honesty. Through wordplay and a proximity to the adolescent world of experience, he redefines the genre of »boarding school story« and depicts the apparently untroubled everyday life of teenagers. The chapter headings, however, which range from »one hundred and sixty-three days before« to »one hundred and sixty-three days thereafter«, herald a painful rupture. The questions that confront Miles, Chip »the Colonel« and Takumi after Alaska’s shocking death, revolve around guilt, betrayal and responsibility. »My fiction is concerned with […] the important questions we ask ourselves about what it means to be a person,« says Green. »Someone like Alaska is raw and poetic at the same time. A novel […] about both the moment and eternity, about the labyrinth of the world and the paradise of the heart«, is the jury’s grounds for the bestowal of LUCHS number 241 (2007). The book for teenagers has been translated into thirteen languages and was nominated by two juries for the German Youth Literature Prize in 2008. »An Abundance of Katherines« (2006), a comic novel with esoteric footnotes and mathematical formulae, was also awarded various prizes. Colin falls in love nineteen times, always with girls named Katherine, and nineteen times is »polished off«. Upon completing high school he and his friend Hassan go on a trip through the U.S. In his bag he carries a »love theorem«, which he must protect from abandonment. When they make a stop in a small town in Tennessee, they meet the clever Lindsey – Colin’s first non-Katherine.

Along with his brother Hank, John Green founded the video blog »Brotherhood 2.0« in 2007, during which they only communicated with each other via video for one year; it was one of the most popular programs in the history of YouTube. »Paper Towns«, Green’s eagerly awaited third novel, will appear in October 2008.

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