A body of writers who are not native speakers of German but who have nonetheless chosen to adopt German as their literary language, such as Emine Sevgi Özdamar, features prominently on Germany's contemporary literary scene. In this article the author argues that Oldsmar draws upon her knowledge and experience of the foreign in order to defamiliarise German literary language. She then discusses the significance of her findings for the debate on foreignisation within Translation Studies and argues that the analysis of style in the writing of non-native speaker writers can move Translation Studies towards a better understanding of the foreign, both in the source and in the target text.