LiteraturSchweiz

Reading tip

Martin R. Dean, Meine Väter: The Swiss born Martin R. Dean is the son of two fathers, both from Trinidad. He varies this private fact in his novel by using different narrative forms. His first person narrator finds this situation to be rather painful, because two fathers is one to many. When he becomes a father himself, he sets out to find his biological father who lives London. He meets him in an old folks home, they solve their helpless silence by going on a trip ‹home› to Trinidad. But in the tropical climate any attempt to clarify things vanishes in the maelstrom of sensations and perceptions. For the narrator, meeting this stranger generates moments of clarification and of alienation at the same time. In a sensual and intelligent way, «Meine Väter» is about the quest for a steady identity which basically cannot be found anymore. The patriarcal system tries to keep this illusion alive though, but only the mother is certain. At the end, the narrator has to recognise that despite his yearning he cannot deal with his tropical ‹home›, neither in physical nor in culinary matters. He has long become (a slightly atypical) Swiss. «I am me» is his conclusion. I am me and my friends are my family. (Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)