To set a time when guest workers were still called guest workers, the Guild of literary critics to a valid object of investigation. Among migrant literature in understanding the literary texts, and negotiated by migrants, first or second Generation written, either homesickness, alienation, or social exclusion. With the years of the analysis to claim sharpened. From immigrant literature, post-migrant “of perspectives”. In the meantime, is hardly closed by the migration background of the author on the subject or the narrative of his novel. An expectation of this Form of literature has, however, stubbornly: It reads out preferred identity. Not rarely, it seems, is the protagonist’s identity or integrity conflict here, ambiguities need to keep, stable protagonists personalities to be developed.
is Refreshingly different in Maruan Paschens now published a second novel, “Christmas”, which is designed as a psychoanalytic Séance. The film’s Protagonist, he bears the same name as the author, reported his silent therapist, Dr. Goose’s head from the Christmas party of the family, the “Paschens”. An autobiographical Christmas story? No, the characters in this novel have no stable identities, no real references, you don’t want to be interpreted.
Each Chapter of a family history
The Paschens, Maruans mother and her four brothers, Tarzan, Art, Otto, and Berti. Once a year they gather for Christmas, with Fondue and table conversations are preferred to the Opening of the gifts. Talking about the past, the present and the previous Generation. Each of these 25 Chapter of the book contains a family history, an image, a Ritual, an object of the nostalgic memory of the narrator inflamed. They are arranged spontaneously, disparate and urgent.
Often, the episodes have scenic character: Because the beef is always given in a clockwise direction in the round, since the steam at the end of Rumtopf, which is silent to drink, small annual Gestures with your family a unique sense. Since the photographs of the ancestors in the military are uniform, and the family’s inability to talk about it. Since the memory of Maruans is the father, one in the West Bank, living Unknown, conserved, and carefully told by the Relatives. Since the destroyed butter Cup and the desperation of the maternal pain, given their shards.
Maruan Paschen succeeds in objects in the memory for a whole time to unfold the panorama of his youth, and therefore of the eighties and nineties, a time “in the color Green to a political color of the VW beetle was to VW Golf”, and “in the soup with egg yolks have been tied, instead of flour”. The novel is the description of the Christmas gathering of a family that is just normal as any other, nor salvation, and each in his own abyss around. The narrative meanders, and is not condensed, but seems to be relaxed and nonchalant Hand-written. In contrast, the Severity of the memory shards, the pain and isolate, again and again to silent the plate, while others are talking.
Paschens novel is an inventory of what was in the pan, if you wanted to capture identity really. And because this shell will be described as so great, the memories as so varied, it is not a book about identity as an abstract size, but in addition to that, this is always relational: the Protagonist Maruan is the son and only child. Fatherless, but it is not clear that four memory narrative can be used to replace the end, and sometimes a reminder-find the uncle of a missing father sufficiently? Paschens characters are fluid and changeable, they cling to their interlocutors, and are always a bit alone. You want to believe that behind such a character conception of a real and human belief.
