The Novel by Katja Petrowskaja “Perhaps Esther”: Fictional Topography of a Family
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31861/pytlit2021.104.048Keywords:
family topography, german family novel, memory, history, war, archive, Katja Petrowskaja, “Maybe Esther”Abstract
The literary debut, the novel “Maybe Esther” by Katja Petrowskaja, was published in 2014 in the Berlin publishing house “Suhrkamp” in German and immediately fell into the bestseller category. The work caused a considerable resonance in the German-speaking cultural environment. Even before the appearance of a full-fledged novel, the author received one of the most prestigious literary awards – the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for reading of a fragment from a future book, which would later appear in a work called “Babi Yar”. However, the laureate wasn’t an ethnic German woman, but an immigrant – Ukrainian by origin, born in Kyiv. The young author tells the story of his multicultural family (Ukrainian / Polish / Jewish / Russian) going deeper up to the 19th century. Through specific events of a small family such significant phenomena as revolution, war, ghetto, concentration camp, Holocaust, Babi Yar, occupation, various kinds of persecution etc. are seen. Therefore, a mosaic of small self-sufficient stories emerges, which create a large historical panel. The author is the bearer of a multifaceted and complex genetic memory.
References
Assman, A. (2012). Prostory spohadu. Formy ta transformatsiï kul′turnoï pamiati [Spaces of memory. Forms and transformations of cultural memory]. Kyiv : Nika-Tsentr, 440 p. (in Ukrainian).
Butsko, A. (2014). Katia Petrovskaia: “V etoi knizhke vse pravda – krome nemetskogo iazyka” [Everything is true in this book, except for the German language]. Colta.ru, 29 April. (in Russian). URL: https://www.colta.ru/articles/literature/3067-katya-petrovskaya-v-etoy-knizhke-vse-pravda-krome-nemetskogo-yazyka (accessed: 10 November 2021).
Matiychuk, O. (2020). Dolaiuchy chasovi i prostorovi mezhi: rekonstruktsiia rodynnoï istoriï u romani Kati Petrovs′koï “Mabut′ Ester” [Overcoming temporal and spatial boundaries: a reconstruction of family history in Katia Petrovskaia’s novel “Maybe Esther”]. In: Perestupy kordoniv u literaturi ta kul′turi XX–XXI st. Kyiv : Vydavnychyi dim Dmytra Buraho, pp. 78–93. (in Ukrainian).
Petrowskaja, K. (2015). Mabutʹ Ester [Maybe Esther]. Chernivtsi : Knyhy – XXI, 228 s. (in Ukrainian).
Rykhlo, P. (2015). Netlinne derevo rodu. Pisliamova [An imperishable tree of the genus. Epilogue]. In: Petrowskaja, K. Mabutʹ Ester. Chernivtsi : Knyhy – XXI, pp. 217–224. (in Ukrainian).
Shutiak, L. (2015). Katia Petrovs′ka: “Viina i ie antychnistiu, z iakoï my ne vyberemosia” [War is antiquity, from which we will not get out]. Zbruch, 12 October. (in Ukrainian). URL: https://zbruc.eu/node/42481 (accessed: 10 November 2021).
Yaremchuk, O. (2015). Katia Petrovs′ka: “Chuzhykh zhertv ne buvaie” [Katja Petrowskaja: “There are no somebody else’s victims”]. Den′, no. 192, 22 October. (in Ukrainian). URL: https://day.kyiv.ua/uk/article/ukrayinci-chytayte/katya-petrovska-chuzhyh-zhertv-ne-buvaye (accessed: 10 November 2021).
Conterno, C. (2018). Erinnerungstopographien in Katja Petrowskajas Vielleicht Esther. Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik, Volume 50, Number 1, pp. 233–245. https://doi.org/10.3726/JA501_233
Derrida, J. (1995). Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression. Diacritics, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 9–63. https://doi.org/10.2307/465144
Petrowskaja, K. (2014). Vielleicht Esther. Geschichten. Berlin : Suhrkamp Verlag, 288 S.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Sofiya Varetska
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.