Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German LiteratureDialogue and Storytelling

The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Dialogue and Storytelling [The story of Selim and Alexander begins in the Bavarian village of Rosenheim with minimalist dialogue. When a train reserved for migrant laborers from Turkey stops briefly in January 1965, a young German soldier defies the stationmaster’s admonitions not to board the northbound train. Concerned only with returning to base on time, Alexander initially ignores the welcoming gestures made by one of the five Turkish men sharing a compartment for six. The absentminded interloper finally responds to a tap on his shoulder and the German word for “please” by occupying the sixth seat and greeting his traveling companions as custom warrants. They all reply in kind, but then silence sets in. Quickly burying himself in his newspaper, the awkward newcomer spends the remainder of the journey exchanging stolen glances with the Turks around him, especially Selim, the most attentive observer in the compartment. When another traveler intones the laborers’ destination as a question, to ask whether Alexander is also headed for Kiel, the uncomprehending soldier merely shrugs his shoulders, says nothing, and wonders to himself what the presumably foreign utterance could mean. Eventually the industrial recruits resume their Turkish conversation, and Alexander reads on. The two protagonists of Sten Nadolny’s Selim oder Die Gabe der Rede [Selim or The Gift of Speech], a novel that made literary history in 1990, do not cross paths again until 1967, when circuitous routes and diverse experiences in postwar Germany lead them to the same bar in West Berlin.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German LiteratureDialogue and Storytelling

Download PDF
46 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/the-turkish-turn-in-contemporary-german-literature-dialogue-and-hio0soK8Vd

References (0)

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2005
ISBN
978-1-349-53109-7
Pages
31 –77
DOI
10.1057/9781403981868_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The story of Selim and Alexander begins in the Bavarian village of Rosenheim with minimalist dialogue. When a train reserved for migrant laborers from Turkey stops briefly in January 1965, a young German soldier defies the stationmaster’s admonitions not to board the northbound train. Concerned only with returning to base on time, Alexander initially ignores the welcoming gestures made by one of the five Turkish men sharing a compartment for six. The absentminded interloper finally responds to a tap on his shoulder and the German word for “please” by occupying the sixth seat and greeting his traveling companions as custom warrants. They all reply in kind, but then silence sets in. Quickly burying himself in his newspaper, the awkward newcomer spends the remainder of the journey exchanging stolen glances with the Turks around him, especially Selim, the most attentive observer in the compartment. When another traveler intones the laborers’ destination as a question, to ask whether Alexander is also headed for Kiel, the uncomprehending soldier merely shrugs his shoulders, says nothing, and wonders to himself what the presumably foreign utterance could mean. Eventually the industrial recruits resume their Turkish conversation, and Alexander reads on. The two protagonists of Sten Nadolny’s Selim oder Die Gabe der Rede [Selim or The Gift of Speech], a novel that made literary history in 1990, do not cross paths again until 1967, when circuitous routes and diverse experiences in postwar Germany lead them to the same bar in West Berlin.]

Published: Oct 6, 2015

Keywords: Emotional Content; Turkish Woman; Boundary Work; Rupture Event; Turkish Migration

There are no references for this article.