By trying to give an artistic approach through my book I stepped unwillingly into other fields. Like a dentist being asked about a throat ache on a much more relevant scale, I was caught in trying to explain what was unexplainable for me. In the end, trying to explain why it was unexplainable finally led to a huge general insecurity in dealing with the subject at all.

Something as radical as a war can only be understood (if at all) through the collaboration of journalists, academia, artists and, of course, people.

Regarding fiction, our concern shouldn't be the author's origin (and of course I am forgetting the sales people right here), because that is actually merely a simplified, almost insulting judgment of the book by its cover - or rather by the name and origin of its author - an act of discrimination if we want to say it in a more provoking way, but at the least an act of ignorance and false empathy.

I also did a great amount of writing while doing research. It gave me the opportunity to meet and talk to people other than family, but also to explore my own memory deeper by comparing it to the memories of others who were in my home town during, for example, the political transition from socialism to a nationalistic "democracy" or during the bombings.

Writing about a war will always be political writing, no matter what amount of hermetical hide-and-seek or aesthetical operations are involved.

It can stand in the way of narration in cases where we want the protagonist to actually go through some kind of catharsis while our own (non-fictional) experiences and stories lead to something banal or completely uninteresting.

The reason for writing that essay was less a personal agenda than an attempt to explain my unease with the general label of "immigrant literature" after I had read quite a number of reviews (in different countries) involving books written by 'immigrants.'