Meral Kureyshi

Elefanten im Garten

«Wir hatten sogar einen Löwen im Garten, der war gefährlich.»

The narrator of «Elephants in the Garden» is a girl of twenty-four whose name is never revealed to us. The story starts with the unexpected death of her father, and then moves between recounting the narrator's struggle to accept this loss and stories from her childhood – both in her former home in Prizren, Kosovo and in Switzerland, where the family move to when the narrator is ten. In the present-day sections the narrator addresses her father directly, bringing a poignant quality to the narrative. She writes perceptively about the family's struggles to integrate into Swiss life, especially with regard to to the language and the bureaucratic problems of immigration. Meral Kureyshi's thoughtful debut is a beautiful meditation on the father-daughter relationship, mourning and the experience of immigration. In addition to the thought-provoking emotional journey we share with its narrator, «Elephants in the Garden» offers much-needed insights into the challenges faced by migrants in their struggles to assimilate into a new culture.(Source: New Books in German, issue 39 / 2016)

Translation of title: Elephants in the Garden

Limmat Verlag, Zürich 2015

ISBN: 978-3-85791-784-4