Documentation Swiss literatures

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[ book tip by SIKJM ] «Tschipo» (1978), «Tschipo and the Penguins» (1985) and «Tschipo in the Stone Age» (1995) are Franz Hohler’s three children’s novels. They share the same main character and also the same underlying idea: the one about the small boy Tschipo, whose intensive dreams often leave behind something in his bed or room. A smell, a pine cone, a chocolate bicycle or even a lively penguin. Tschipo, however, can also dream himself to the place of his nightly adventures: in the first volume onto a South Sea island and in the third into the Stone Age.

With the invention of the «transactive» dreamer Tschipo, Franz Hohler opened up wonderful and, in the true sense of the word, fantastic perspectives.  Ever fresh stories of incredible incidents become possible, ever novel worlds appear, since dreams do not conform to the laws of reality. An exciting and creative tension unfolds between the realistic level of the novels (Tschipo’s home environment, comments by the narrator, who speaks directly to the readers) and the unpredictability of the dream activities and their consequences. It is a tension heightened by the playful way Hohler uses language, which includes the awareness that spoken Swiss German differs majorly from standard German. Elucidating with relish, Franz Hohler includes words from Swiss dialect in the texts and thereby builds a bridge to oral storytelling tradition, the archetype of any literature. In «Tschipo in the Stone Age» the language tinkerer even invents a distinct «cave dweller language,» which, in its onomatopoetic abundance, sometimes brings to mind Swiss German – making it a an additional amusement for Swiss children.
(Gerda Wurzenberger, trans. by Simon Froehling)
  
Source: SIKJM

[ Favourite quote ] «Es fiel ihm gar nicht auf, dass er in einer anderen Sprache redete, es fiel ihm nur auf , dass er unter einem dicken Fell auf einem Haufen Laub lag und dass das Tageslicht nicht durch ein Fenster, sondern durch ein Felsloch hereinkam.»

[ book info ] Hohler, Franz: Tschipo. (original language: Deutsch) dtv, München, 1978 . ISBN: 978-3-423-62293-6.