Melinda Nadj Abonji

Melinda Nadj Abonji has written a courageous, moving novel about one of the oldest subjects in the world: homeland. If it is true that a writer’s voice draws on childhood experiences, then the underlying tone of Melinda Nadj Abonji’s new book has its source in the disintegrating world of former Yugoslavia. Tauben fliegen auf is not an autobiographical, but a documentary novel that draws on the experiences and memories of this Zurich writer with Yugoslav roots. Abonji uses flashbacks to tell the story of Nomi and Ildikó, who grow up with their grandmother in the province of Vojvodina, a region in northern Serbia with a Hungarian minority. Until one day, Uncle Móric packs the sisters into his red Moscovich with their suitcases and food for the journey and takes the children to their mother and father in Switzerland. (...) The foreign culture, the new language, the tangible social differences in the small village on Lake Zurich's right shore, and their parents who slave away day and night to earn their living in Café Mondial: Nomi and Ildikó lead their lives with bated breath. Abonji skilfully transfers this feeling of tension in their stomachs to her narrative structure. Nothing flows away sluggishly here - memories, images, dreams, and accounts of everyday life are strung together side by side. Abonji’s clear language, which endeavours to be composed, and which encounters life with wit and coolness, carries sure-handedly from one chapter to the next.

Alice Werner: „Zwischen Rösti und Palatschinken“
© Berner Zeitung, 5 August 2010