The Russian is one who loves birch trees

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Russian is someone who loves birch trees is a novel by the German - Azerbaijani writer Olga Grjasnowa from 2012. The author's debut novel is based on autobiographical sketches with the immigration of a young Jewish woman who emigrated with her family as a quota refugee in the 1990s of the former Soviet Union immigrated to Germany . The novel also takes up questions about German and Jewish identity in Germany in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Summary

In the mid-1990s, young Mascha came to Hesse in Germany with her parents from the Soviet successor state Azerbaijan, which was in a civil war, as part of the quota refugee regulations . Her Jewish family in Baku is faced with the choice of emigrating to Israel or Germany, but then finally decides to immigrate to the successor state of Nazi Germany , which repeatedly raises questions about the constitution of the "new Germany" and its role and identity be addressed.

Almost “speechless” at first due to emigration, the protagonist finally proves to be a great linguist and is aiming for a career at the United Nations . In this context, the twenty-seven-year-old Mascha repeatedly receives foreign scholarships, which take her to Moscow , Brussels , Vienna or Warsaw and gives the image of a young, emancipated woman who is about to have a brilliant career. Right at the beginning of the work, however, her relationship with her German-Christian friend Elias is described, who later dies of an illness, whereupon the protagonist desperately flees to Israel, and describes her experiences there in dealing with her identity. In Israel she is finally overtaken by her childhood trauma of the Azerbaijani civil war and pogroms in Baku, but also continues to evaluate her connection to Judaism in general, the difficulty of living as a Jew in Germany fifty years after the Shoah , as well as her personal relationships with family and friends Partners in the past.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Russian is someone who loves birch trees by Olga Grjasnowa (review). Retrieved September 22, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Jörg Plath: High-speed identity carousel | NZZ . March 13, 2012, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed on September 22, 2019]).
  3. ↑ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Olga Grjasnowa: "The Russian is someone who loves birch trees" | DW | 09.10.2018. Retrieved September 22, 2019 (German).