Pigeons fly up

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Doves fly up is a novel by Melinda Nadj Abonji published in 2010 , for which she received the German Book Prize and the Swiss Book Prize . By September 2011, the book had sold over 125,000 times.

The story described by the first-person narrator Ildiko Kocsis takes place in German-speaking Switzerland and in the Serbian Vojvodina . The narrative behavior is largely personal , so the narrator is in the middle of the action and tells from his point of view; now and then the author switches to the authorial narrative style , so she is “omniscient”. The plot is told from the inside perspective. Ildiko Kocsis as the narrator is mostly part of the plot. Tales of things that take place far away and are therefore viewed from the outside perspective are seldom heard.

action

Chapter 1: Tito's Summer

The Kocsis family spends their summer holidays in Serbia in a chocolate-brown Chevrolet. During the trip, Ildiko reminisces about Matteo, a new student in her class with whom she fell in love. Shortly before arriving, they drive through a slum area and discover that nothing has changed. They also pass the local, neglected cemetery, which they pay a visit every time to commemorate their deceased relatives. The first thing you do is visit Mamika (paternal grandmother), and Ildiko first inspects everything to make sure that everything has stayed the same. There is a lot to talk about about food, such as B. looks like everyday life in the laundry they run. A few days later they drive to the house of Uncle Móric (Miklós' older brother) and Aunt Manci to attend the wedding celebration of their son Nándor and Valéria. After the feast there is a sudden political argument between Miklós and Móric. However, they quickly make up again.

Chapter 2: The Kocsis Family

They open the Café Mondial in Switzerland, which they take over from the Tanners. The whole family and four other employees will work in the café, with two serving daughters leaving the Mondial within a very short time.

The Kocsis have had some experience in the past running a cafeteria in town, but it turned out to be unprofitable. In a flashback it is mentioned briefly that the father worked as a butcher for a while. When he asks his former employer about this unfavorable situation for him, Miklós registers. Thus, a few years later, he can bring the family to join him, first his wife Rózsa and six months later the two daughters.

Chapter 3: border policeman, weeping willows

In Tompa, this time in a white Mercedes-Benz, the Kocsis family is forced by a border policeman with a sheepdog to undergo a head-to-toe examination. This time Ildiko and Nomi get to know their half-sister Janka, of whose existence they had not known until then. The two learn from Mamika that Janka emerged from her father's first marriage to Ibolya. However, a few months after Janka's birth, Miklós left his wife by filing for divorce. Shortly afterwards he met Ildiko's mother Rózsa, with whom he wanted to start over. They ran a grocery store in another town, where they made the acquaintance of Sándor, who gave them the idea of ​​emigrating to Switzerland.

Chapter 4: words like

At peak times it gets hectic in the café, which is why the new serving daughter Glorija, who comes from Croatia , is hired. One day Ildi asks her mother if she would consider bringing Aunt Icu (Rózsa's older sister) to Switzerland to help them in the cafeteria. The mother freaks out and cannot understand why her daughter is asking such a question. The question is very close to her because she has already thought about it herself, but it is impossible.

On the way to the Mondial, Miklós and Ildiko talk about the fact that Ildiko has interrupted his law studies . Ildiko doesn't tell him that she would rather study history. Her father is of the firm opinion that you have to experience history because it doesn't fit in a book.

Chapter 5: Heavenly

This time they drive their white Mercedes to see Aunt Icu, Uncle Piri and cousin Béla. The following day, the women pack a picnic while the men sleep off their intoxication. Ildiko, Aunt Icu, Nomi and Rósza are on their way to pay a visit to their cousin Csilla, and thus Aunt Icu's daughter. Csilla, who ran away from home with her lover Csaba, now lives in a poor gypsy neighborhood. Rózsa tries to convince her to return home with her own story. Ildiko and Nomi hear the story of a young woman who longs for a good education. However, since the financial means are lacking, she wants to successfully complete at least one apprenticeship. During this time she met and fell in love with a man named Imre. Some time later, the mother of the young woman dies and at the same time she learns that she is pregnant. However, she loses the child and waits for her lover to return from the military, which however never happened. It wasn't until some time later that the young woman found out that her father had gone to Imre and said that she now had someone else.

Through this story, Rózsa admonishes Csilla not to mess with her father. Csilla thanks for the wise words, but thinks it is her destiny to live in poverty with her Csaba.

Chapter 6: Worlds

Ildiko and Nomi go to an occupied factory site called Wohlgroth , where they get drunk and stoned with their friends, Mark and Dave. Ildiko has had a really bad trip and feels attacked from everywhere, does not feel at home and Mark, her friend, cannot calm her down either.

Naturalization test in the summer of 1987, where the parents promptly fail, while the children do not have to take it. In the evening they play Monopoly and the father keeps losing, which leads to hate speech against Switzerland. Nomi then offers that she and Ildiko could translate for their parents on the exam. The parents make it on the second attempt. Dragana talks to Ildiko about the escalating situation in the Balkans. Ildiko is worried about the relatives with whom they have had no contact for a long time, because the lines are dead.

Chapter 7: July

Ildiko and her father drive to Serbia to Mamika's funeral in a silver-gray Mercedes. Because it is snowing, they have to drive slower and more carefully and Miklós starts to cry when Ildiko hands him a loaf of ham. At the funeral, Ildiko thinks of Mamika when she took a bath in ugly, Cossack-looking underpants and wonders why she thinks of this moment of all times. She throws grape hyacinths on the coffin and when she hears Juli, the crazy girl from the village, moan, she adjusts to a life without Mamika.

Then flashback to the time when the girls were brought to Switzerland. Uncle Móric and Mamika drove with them by car to Belgrade , from where the girls and Mamika took the train to Switzerland. Since Uncle Móric's car, a Moskvitch, did not start, they only drove an hour late and had to wait again to say goodbye to July on the corner of the street.

Chapter 8: Dalibor

A boy named Dalibor shows up at the Mondial and asks about work. Since all positions are currently filled, Ildiko makes a note of his number and it doesn't take long until they meet regularly. He is Serb and comes from Dubrovnik. Ildiko and Nomi take him to Wohlgroth to get him a job at the bar. There it comes to a meeting between Dalibor, Mark and Ildiko, whereupon Mark reacts rather jealously and it is certain that it is over between him and Ildiko.

Chapter 9: We

For Rózsa's 50th birthday, a birthday party was organized in a fish restaurant, to which the closest friends are invited. It is going to be a nice evening, with aunt Icu being covered, even though she was in Serbia. In addition, Rózsa's wife Köchli tells about her past. (That she had grown up as an only child because her two sisters were already married. She also tells of her parents' argument in which her father claimed that she was not his child, but that of another man.)

Another flashback asserts that Nándor and not, as previously claimed, Uncle Móric drove the children to the train station, where they then took the bus to Belgrade.

Chapter 10: Real Big

The Croatian Glorija accidentally bumped into the Bosnian-born Dragana. An argument breaks out between the two, whereupon Dragana no longer shows up for work after this incident. The first time Nomi stayed away from home for 24 hours, the father's reaction was quite stormy. But when Nomi is finally home, he can't hide how worried he was about her and hugs her. The Kocsis's phone rings early in the morning and they receive a message that Béla has been drafted into the army.

In the restaurant, all guests talk about the Balkan War and the origins of the Kocsis family. This upsets Ildi, but she realizes that it doesn't matter what the others think. You can't help that your family lives in Yugoslavia.

Chapter 11: Mamika and Papuci

This time when the Kocsis family pays their relatives a visit, they don't have much time because they only have a few days. One evening Mamika tells them the story of her grandfather Papuci. At that time they owned a large farm and received regular visits from the fascists who courted Papuci and who regularly asked him to join them. Since he refused every time, the men left again, mostly with a few farm animals or grain.

When the communists came to power after the Second World War, they wanted to destroy and expropriate the bourgeoisie, to which the Kocic family belonged. When it became known that the men in the neighborhood had been arrested, Papuci hid in corn or wheat fields for weeks until he was finally caught and taken to a labor camp. He didn't come back until a year later and was unrecognizable. He died that same year at the age of 51. In addition, the Kocsis family has lost all of its property.

Chapter 12: Love. Ocean. The river

Ildiko tells Dalibor that her cousin has been drafted, whereupon Dalibor reacts quick-tempered, as this evokes memories of his own as a mercenary. They meet for half a year in the boathouse until one day he says that it can't go on like this. When she tries to call him the next day, Dalibor's cousin answers and says that Dalibor has gone back to Dubrovnik.

A short introduction about the time when Ildiko and Nomi have just arrived in Switzerland. When Ildiko and Mamika went for a walk, they could not find their way back and had to ask several people for directions, always mispronouncing the street. It took a while until an elderly gentleman showed them the way. They realized how little it takes to be completely lost in this world. She also reports the pain in her heart when Mamika, who accompanied her to Switzerland, drives home.

Chapter 13: Hands in the Air

One day someone emptied himself on the toilet seat in the men's room. Next to it is a pair of men's underpants. In addition, someone left a message with the excrement on the wall. Feeling personally attacked, Ildiko goes with holy, angry zeal to clean the toilet and damn even the man who told her the toilet was dirty.

In a flashback, the event is described when the community voted on naturalization. When the vote came, the majority voted in favor of the Kocsis family's application for naturalization.

Ildiko confronts the parents about the incident in the men's room and can't understand why they just put up with this matter. The mother replies that they will only get ahead if they look over hostility and humiliation. Ildi leaves the village.

Chapter 14: November

Ildiko has since moved out of her parents' house and lives alone in a tiny apartment near a motorway. It was difficult for the parents to accept that their daughter would move out unmarried, but Ildiko stuck with it. She sits in her apartment most of the time, staring at the highway and people watching. Even her landlady is worried about her, but Ildiko says that everything must be unpacked in good time. In the last scene, Ildiko and Nomi remember the deceased of their family at a common grave they do not know. After all, they don't know when they will be able to return to Vojvodina next time.

Figure constellations and family tree

The figure constellations were divided up by country and individual groups of people were grouped together to simplify matters. The family tree refers to Ildiko's family as far as references have been made to it in the novel.

Figure constellation Switzerland
Figure constellation Serbia
Family tree of the Kocsis family

reception

Martin Ebel wrote in Die Welt : “One of the qualities of this book is the avoidance of all the seductive clichés that the history of integration and the history of rebellion suggest. In the Balkans chapters, no paprika-and-slivovitz-cosiness is evoked, but a form of jointly celebrated joy for which the family in Switzerland finds no equivalent. [...] This book shows the hardness that is inherent in an integration that is successful by our standards. And does it in a wonderfully swinging, almost musical language. "
Iris Radisch judged in the time :" The novel by Melinda Nadj Abonji about the Serbian-Hungarian family from Vojvodina unfolds in a Swiss town on the lake and is an exemplary naturalization and a success story that should warm the heart of all no-diligence-no-price ideologues. [...] It's just a shame that she tells her story rather honestly. Her youthful exuberance of speech hardly knows full stop and comma, sprinkles the text with a flood of exclamation and question marks, the degree of excitement bears no recognizable relation to the Swiss problem situation, but leaves the impression of a sympathetic immaturity and freshness.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German Book Prize 2010
  2. ↑ Swiss Book Prize 2010
  3. ^ Book price shortlist as a total work of art , focus.de, September 14, 2011
  4. ↑ Martin Ebel: "Tauben fly up" - The hardness of integration , review in Die Welt on September 25, 2010, accessed on October 8, 2012.
  5. ↑ Iris Radisch : Neue Heimat, female , article in Die Zeit from October 5, 2010, accessed on October 8, 2012.