Arjouni, Jakob

Pseudonym for the German author and dramatist Jakob Bothe. He was born as Jakob Michelsen in Frankfurt am Main as the son of dramatist Hans Günter Michelsen and publisher Ursula Bothe, and later formally adopted his mother’s surname as his own. He grew up in Frankfurt and Ober-Roden in Hesse, matriculated from the Odenwaldschule elite school in 1983 and subsequently settled in Montpelier in France where he supported himself with odd jobs and started to write under the pen name ‘Arjouni’, which was his current girlfriend’s surname; he was subsequently married to her for a year too.