In search of a new identity

German author Ronya Othmann discusses her acclaimed book "The Summers" and the importance of literature in preserving memories and identity in times of conflict and migration.

In brutalising times, literature keeps us sane, said German author, poet and journalist Ronya Othmann, whose acclaimed book The Summers (translated from German Die Summers), published in 2020, is all about the entanglement of migration and how families are torn apart when faced with war and loss.

To document the years spent in conflict and exile is important, she said, because when everything is lost, it is important to preserve memories associated with home. “The responsibility of literature is to keep the memories alive”, said Ms. Othman, who was in conversation with Katharina Gorgen, Director of Goethe-Institut Chennai, at the The Hindu Lit For Life Fest on January 26.

Having researched and worked extensively on migration, homeland and war, Ms. Othmann, said the protagonist of her novel, Leyla, who like many other children, had inherited her father’s history – a traumatising migration -- and was caught between memories of her student life in Germany and her summer travels to her father’s Kurdish village in Syria. It helped her negotiate questions of identity, belonging and integration. Home is a crucial site of one’s life and yet it is is not about a place, but depends on people. “It is about another country where memory and imagination integrate experiences, she said .

Addressing issues of gender and cultural differences, she said women migrants had it harder as they have to adapt to the different traditions in a new country which is not their ancestral homeland. But dreams and hopes bind people together when they are torn apart.

She said while she relates to multiple stories of migration and narrates through Leyla’s village stories, distancing from reality helps to heal. Germany is a country of immigrants and people are negotiating different worlds and reframing what it means to have a home, lose it, find a new one and ultimately belong to one.

She also mentioned disenchantment when Leyla understands how people in her grandparents’ village are ready if there is a need to leave again; and in her fun life as a student in Germany how people are indifferent when ISIS troops enter the village near the Turkish border. “There are many layers to living,” she added.

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