display

The author Dmitrij Kapitelman, born in 1986 in Kiev, published one of the most poignant stories of our Corona times last year.

In the news magazine “Der Spiegel” he described his work as a salesman in his parents' starving “Magasin” in Leipzig, a small Russian grocery store that went bankrupt at and with the first lockdown.

Anyone who had read this just wanted to read on in the life of this author who made an impressive debut in 2016 with the Israel travel novel “The smile of my invisible father”.

Kapitelman came to Germany with his family at the age of eight.

Like the pianist Igor Levit, the politician Marina Weisband and the writer Wladimir Kaminer, he belongs to the group of Jewish Soviet citizens who have been able to immigrate to the Federal Republic since 1991.

In school, Kapitelman is completely socialized in German, the Kiev of his childhood and parents is above all a memory that tastes like spiced bacon, a kind of Proust madeleine made from pork fat.

“A Formality in Kiev” is the title of Kapitelman's second book, and it tells the story of Dima, who after 25 years applied for a German passport in Leipzig and, in order to get it finally issued, has to take care of one last formalities in Kiev, namely the official one Get his birth certificate certified.

"I envy you about dealing with the Ukrainian authorities," says the clerk from the Leipzig immigration authorities.

What turns into a German-Ukrainian bureaucracy purr turns out to be a journey into a double “state family life”.

display

The first-person narrator is confronted more than he would have ever thought possible with his own Soviet past, an identity that he believed he had long since shed.

The punch line for all official visits in his country of origin is the official language, which was only installed after he left: “I hardly understand Ukrainian, we came from the Russian part at the time.” To Dima, Ukrainian sounds “like a kind of Slavic Mandarin”.

Kapitelman tells stories full of humor, warmth and esprit.

His enthusiasm for formulating alternates between endearing words ("Vati-Shabbati") and funny angry words ("Katzastan" describes the mother's tick, who cares for up to 13 cats at the same time and tends to be better with animals than with people).

The book is, if you will, also about the failed emancipation of a migrant child from his parents, about the “desire to use a German passport to force distance from my immigrant parents”.

The formalities are done, then in the middle of the book Dima's father unexpectedly appears in Kiev, even has to go to the hospital, and so the contact with the Ukraine takes on its own course.

Unlike in Germany, where everything (even for purchases at the supermarket checkout) is subject to the imperative of quick “disposal”, in Ukraine the art of “thanksgiving” reigns, the literal translation of

Otblagodari

, the euphemism for bribery, without them Nothing goes.

But of course not as clumsy as a German socialized Dima and we believe with him.

Nobody takes a thank you in the hallway, he is instructed.

“Re-vaccinated against naivety”, Dima sits in the hospital that is supposed to take care of Dad Shabbati.

Here you can listen to our WELT podcasts

We use the player from the provider Podigee for our WELT podcasts.

We need your consent so that you can see the podcast player and to interact with or display content from Podigee and other social networks.

Activate social networks

I consent to content from social networks being displayed to me.

This allows personal data to be transmitted to third party providers.

This may require the storage of cookies on your device.

More information can be found here.

display

The lovingly portrayed minor characters also make this book a small comédie humaine in Kiev.

This book should be read by anyone who considers integration to be a mere obligation.

“Migration actually never stops,” writes Kapitelman, “even twenty-five years later I am still immigrating to Germany.” He also writes his way back to his Ukrainian-Jewish origins.

Dmitrij Kapitelman writes witty like Saša Stanišić, tenderly sentimental like Joseph Roth and ethnographically just like Emilia Smechowski (“Wir strebermigranten”).

Despite all the cats in “Katzastan” and on the cover - this book proves that contemporary literature with a migrant character has long since ceased to be at the cat's table.

Dmitrij Kapitelman:

A Formality in Kiev

.

Hanser Berlin, 176 pp., € 20.