Ilma Rakusa

Mehr Meer

«Ich träumte mich nach innen, in schneckenartige Labyrinthe, bis an den Tränenpunkt. Dort war es weit und still.»

Ilma Rakusa was born in Hungary and was raised in Maribor, Budapest and Trieste before emigrating to Switzerland with her family in 1951 when she was five years old. This is what her memory passages with the title «Mehr Meer» (More Sea) are all about. In 69 short chapters Rakusa sheds light on an existence without a secure place of home. Dreaming, the girl that she then was tries to handle her unsteady childhood. She does not create an artificial continuum, rather, she displays her reminiscences as a texture of individual, freely related puzzle pieces. Restricted by the «gravitation of memories» the author calls up beloved and strange people, magical and terrible places, representations and feelings. With all due respect to images, she writes, memories primarily go through the nose. Conveying a sensual force of life, odours and scents reliably keep her from forgetting. With delicate melancholy and attention to detail Ilma Rakusa indicates that her true home lies in language – more precisely in the many languages she knows and to which she consistently returns as author and as translator.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

Swiss Book Award 2009

Translation of title: More Sea

Droschl Verlag, Graz 2009

ISBN: 978-3-85420-760-3