Migration. Literatur. Diebe. Gespräch mit Alem Grabovac
Migration. Literature. Thieves: In Conversation with Alem Grabovac

Summary/Abstract: Alem Grabovac was born in Würzburg in 1974 and grew up in various places in southern Germany. He studied at LMU in Munich, in London, and at FU Berlin, graduating in sociology. Recently he published two books of autofiction in German: “Das achte Kind” [The Eighth Child] (2021) and “Die Gemeinheit der Diebe” [The Meanness of Thieves] (2024). The first book is told from a child’s perspective, while the second is more from an adult’s. The story is set in the Frankfurt area of West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s – and a sweeping, trans-regional narrative unfolds that ultimately leads the author and the reader to Berlin. While his first book focuses primarily on his host family, who took Grabovac in as their eighth child, his second book centres on his Croatian mother, Smilja. It is an authentic and very personal case study of the first generation of female “guest workers” from Yugoslavia in Germany. In conversation with the author, the discussion centres on post-migrant self-ascriptions and external attributions in Germany today – including those tied to language – as well as the question of whether a shared post-Yugoslav space of memory and experience is taking shape in Germany today.

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