German-born Doris Dörrie (b. 1955) made her international debut with a film, Männer (1985, Men). Her career as a writer began in 1987 with the book, Liebe, Schmerz und das ganze verdammte Zeug ( Love, Pain and the Whole Damn Thing), after which Dörrie has published six other works of short prose. Dörrie continues to develop her characters in her films, in order to reintroduce them in her next books. For example, the bizarre set of characters in the film Keiner liebt mich (1993, Nobody Loves Me) derives from her book, Für immer und ewig. Eine Art Reigen (1991, "Always and Forever. A Kind of Round Game”). The need to repress one's inner impulses imposed by ordinary, so-called normal life is the starting point of Dörrie's empathic humour and irony. Realities and people's various wishes crash, particularly in love. Her first novel, Was machen wir jetzt? ("And Now What Do We Do?”), came out last year and tells the story of Fred Kaufman, a man who sacrificed his youthful radicalism for money and designer clothes and who now believes that only the power of dull, everyday life can dispel people's illusions. His wife, for her part, strongly believes in Buddhist rituals, and their seventeen-year-old daughter falls in love with a TibetanLlama. In the end, and much to his surprise, Fred finds himself in a Buddhist monastery in France. Die Zeit has named Doris Dörrie one of the best storytellers of contemporary German literature. She is currently working as a teacher in her former alma mater, the Academy for Television & Film in Munich.
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