Incentives - New Literature from Austria

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Literary journalists and researchers introduce current new publications; reading samples allow for a closer look at the texts; short portraits of the authors complement the picture.

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The Project "Incentives" targets at the internationalization of Austrian literature, respectively the translation of current texts.

Project realization: the Office of Documentation of Contemporary Austrian Literature (reviews, author’s portraits) – The Association of Translators (translations) – readme.cc (infrastructure).

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[ book tip by Incentives ] Migration is the recurring theme in the collection of stories ich bin das festland (i am the mainland) by Seher Çakır, who was born in Istanbul in 1971 and grew up in Vienna.

The family is always the immovable point of reference in her stories, whether it is in the metropolises of Istanbul and Vienna or in a village. Initially we accompany little Selda from her former homeland to Vienna, and in doing so we experience the change of cultures through the eyes of a child. And so we are moved all the more when Selda later, as a teenager, tries to commit suicide. There can be no doubt that reading the collection of stories leaves its mark on the world of our feelings.

The heart of the collection is the short story ‘Der Ruf des Muezzins’ (‘The Call of the Muezzin’), with a first-person narrator who uses Austrian instead of Turkish strudel pastry when she bakes her böreks. Her approach to intercultural life between Marmaris and Vienna as the divorced wife of a German husband is a playful one. She does not have any moral problem with her amorous adventures until she returns to her parents in Turkey, because what they traditionally expect from their daughter is a Turkish husband and not a lot of bedroom antics. Erotic, forthright, permissive – these are the key words for the short story ‘One-Night-Stand’. This night in a hotel is not merely retold, but we are actually there, to be precise in the thoughts of the man and woman alternately. Love does not have a role here, it is much rather the sunglasses that do, so that she can remained unrecognized in the Hotel Orient in the middle of the night.

Seher Çakır tells both of the lives of people between Turkish and Austrian cultures and also in general of strong and weak women and their men.

In the telling different perspectives and times of narration with numerous flashes back and forwards create a lively and dynamic effect. The narrative tone changes from serene to excited to melancholy in accordance with the mental state of the characters.

Seher Çakır demonstrates creativity in modern, slangy language, which is occasionally mixed with Turkish proverbs, Viennese dialect or American slang. ich bin das festland (I am the mainland) is a fine and multi-faceted volume, with which Seher Çakır continues the successful prose debut she made with zitronenkuchen für die 56. frau (lemon cakes for the 56th wife) (edition exil 2009).

Abridged from the review by Monika Maria Slunsky, 20 June 2012
Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=9570

[ book info ] Çakır, Seher: Ich bin das Festland. (original language: Deutsch) edition exil, Wien, 2012 . ISBN: 978-3-901899-56-0.