Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair
Autofiction as a matter of form

This year's Leipzig Book Fair prize in the fiction category goes to Dinçer Güçyeter. His book "Unser Deutschlandmärchen" (Our German Fairy Tale) Tale) recounts the writer's family story, which stretches from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.

By Carsten Otte

The life of this writer does indeed read like a German fairy tale. Recently, the poet Dinçer Güçyeter was awarded the prestigious Peter Huchel Prize. With the Leipzig Book Fair prize for his debut novel Unser Deutschlandmärchen, he has now received one of the country's most important literary awards. And this success definitely did not come unwarrented.

Son of guest-worker parents 

Dinçer Güçyeter was born in 1979 in Nettetal in the Lower Rhine region as the son of a Turkish family, namely Fatma and Yilmaz, who had come to Germany for the sole purpose of earning money. These workers used to be called "guest-workers," but today we speak of labor migration.

Between a filled pay envelope and the loss of their home 

In his autobiographically tinged text, Güçyeter very deliberately places the female characters at the center. At the beginning, the nomadic Anatolian daughter Hanife appears, reports on the hard, monotonous village life in Turkey and announces that she will soon "hand over her heavy tongue" to her "daughter Fatma”. This introduces the next narrative voice, which sensitively describes the early death of the father.

Suddenly, everything happens very quickly, Fatma is being married and accompanies her husband to a "land where you can pick money from the trees". Of course, this seems strange to Fatma. "I don't know," she says, "that's what we were told." The year is 1965, and thanks to the legendary " Anwerbabkommen” (Recruitment Agreement), more and more people are moving from Turkey to West Germany, not only enjoying a full pay envelope but also grappling with the loss of their homeland.

Polyphonic, whimsical and impressive

The novel expresses these ambivalent feelings in a "guest worker choir". The text is extremely polyphonic: there are letters and poems, dialogues and prayers as well as family photos in the novel. The disparate experiences cannot be narrated linearly.

This autofiction is defined by the polyphonic form. The observations Fatma makes in Germany are as bizarre as they are depressing. "The days come and go," she says. "The German neighbors give us more furniture. I'm especially happy about the doll. She's missing a leg, but I don't find that tragic."

between old and new home 

As different as the literary tones sound in this novel, the family story proceeds classically, namely chronologically: soon a child is born, who also has his say immediately: "I, the giant baby, am thrown from one lap to the other like a rubber ball, they pinch my cheeks, throw me to the ceiling, the only salvation is to pretend I'm asleep."

Dinçer Güçyeter proves to be an author with a good sense of ironic undertones. The older the narrator gets, the more fragile the family relationships become and the more political and dramatic the text becomes. Unser Deutschlandmärchen describes identity crises of a family living between an old and a new homeland.

In a German Fairy Tale 

Conflicts arise between the generations, there is a dispute about how freely sexuality is allowed to develop. The book can also be understood as a lament that commemorates the many people who have not managed to build a happy life in Germany.

Dinçer Güçyeter trained as a tool mechanic, to the delight of his mother. He then decided at the age of thirty to become a poet and founded a publishing house. As a sideline, he is said to have worked as a forklift driver until recently. He will no longer need to do that after winning the prize at the Leipzig Book Fair. The author, who recounts his life, finds himself in the middle of a very real "German fairy tale”.