How people survive: a Swiss author’s insights

Karin Wenger, former Asia correspondent for Swiss public broadcaster SRF, has put down her microphone and picked up her pen, publishing no less than three books this year that focus on survivors she met while travelling around Asia.

The journalist from Zurich has worked all over Asia since she began reporting there in 2009. From the start of her time there, she revisited people from all walks of life who she met during her newsgathering. Holed up in Bangkok because of the Covid-19 pandemic, she finally had time to write her stories about the tribulations they overcame and their extraordinary survival spirit. The reportages show the consequences of war, corruption, fundamentalism and cheap clothing production. 

Surviving disasters

In Jacob the PrisonerExternal link,  (in German ‘Jacob der Gefangene’), Wenger accompanies an Indian prisoner over ten years. There are two other two books: Verbotene Lieder – Eine afghanische Sängerin verliert ihre HeimatExternal link (Forbidden songs– an Afghan singer loses her home), tells the story of Mina, a singer and television presenter who was forced to flee the Taliban in Afghanistan. One of her songs is about a young woman choosing her own husband.  

Bis zum nächsten MonsunExternal link – Menschen in Extremsituationen’ (Until the next Monsoon – people in extreme situations) is a collection of portraits of people who have survived extraordinary situations, among them Youk Chhangh, who survived the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and set up an archiveExternal link documenting their abuses;  Rozina – the seamstress who survived the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by cutting off her own arm; Peter, the drug-addicted drummer who became a monk; and Jonathan the contract killer, who was involved in the war on drugs in the Philippines, the intensified anti-drug campaign initiated by Rodrigo Duterte, president from 2016 to 2022.

In this video, the author explains that her focus in writing these books was how people find the strength to carry on, having experienced cruelty and trauma that would seem to be beyond human endurance. 

Karin Wenger is from Bassersdorf, canton Zurich. She studied political and media sciences and journalism in Fribourg, Ireland and at Birseit University in Ramallah in the West Bank. She had previously worked as a snowboard instructor, a coach driver, a gaucha (skilled horsewoman) in Argentina, a bank intern and as a peace observer in Chiapas, Mexico. In 2003 she did an internship at the NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) newspaper. From 2004 to 2009 she was a freelance journalist in the Middle East, reporting on the escalation of violence after the second Intifada and the everyday lives of the people in this conflict area. In 2006 she was awarded the Zurich Journalism Prize for a report on the Bedouins in the Negev desert in southern Israel. Karin spends as much of her free time as possible in or on the water. She is now on a year-long sailing expedition, which she reports on in her blogExternal link. Read more about her life in this story in German.