Writer, Journalist André Link Passes Away at 72

The National Literature Centre (Centre national de littérature - CNL) announced that André Link, a prominent Luxembourgish writer and journalist, born on 4 December 1949 in Ettelbrück, had passed away at the age of 72.

The family announced André Link died on 19 July 2022 in Völklingen, Saarland.

André Link made his literary debut in 1976 with The Summer of the White Jade Rabbit, a novel set in the milieu of tsarist émigrés in Vienna. This early work already showed a focus of his work, the occupation with historical themes. In addition to collections of short prose and plays such as What is your opinion on this? (2002) and De Keller (2003), in which Link addressed aspects of Luxembourg society and history, he produced a long series of novels that focused on historical themes and in which his significant artistic, literary, musical and and cultural-historical knowledge became clear.

In doing so, he depicted key moments in Luxembourg history, such as in the novel Auf Winters Schneide (2010), which describes the events that led to the resignation of Grand Duchess Marie-Adelheid in 1919, as well as other historical subjects, such as the destruction of the Inca -Reiches in Intis Untergang (2016), the Elizabethan Age in Christopher Shakespeare (2020) or the stay of Franz Werfel and his wife Alma Mahler in Lourdes in Die Touch (2021).

In these historical novels, Link depicted historical figures and their eras, often from unexpected or surprising angles, in order to relate them to contemporary concerns. In addition, André Link wrote crime novels, some of which are set in his adopted homeland, Saarland.

André Link has received several national awards at the Concours littéraire.