Description

In his literary essay, Pedro Kadivar deals with the topic of internal and external migration. The structuring element is the author's biography: Born in Iran, Kadivar emigrated first to Paris and later to Berlin. Radical in his form of integration, he later gave up his mother tongue entirely and thus suppressed his own origins. In addition to personal insights into the life of a migrant, the essay offers reflections on the meaning of migration in art and refers to important figures in the history of art and literature such as Dürer, Giorgione, Proust, Beckett and Hedayat.

Reviews and press:

Jungle.world:

Pedro Kadivar gave up his native language after fleeing Iran. A conversation about internal and external migration, the abolition of borders in literature and a memorable night with Heiner Müller. (...) more

FixPoetry:

AAt the age of sixteen, Pedro Kadivar escaped the horrors of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution, settled in France, did his Abitur there, studied literature and theater studies, and to this day he directs and writes in French. After his migration, he broke completely with his homeland, with his language because, as he says in an interview with Jungle World, through language the geographic had been in me. He wants to give up his mother tongue completely, but at the same time he has to realize that this is not possible because, along with other languages, Persian is a basic noise inside me. (...) more

Pedro Kadivar's essay on migration in culture and language, which is well worth reading:

"You don't choose your mother tongue,” Pedro Kadivar notes at the beginning. Everyone is given it without being asked, but not everyone can escape it as elegantly as Kadivar, who was born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1967. At sixteen, full of youthful vigour, which he didn't think he could live out in Iran, he went to France. The illusion-saturated lightness of the last few weeks at home is given much more weight in this "Little Book of Migrations" than the struggle to turn the three-month tourist visa into a permanently legalized stay and a school and university degree, or the question of how he did all this actually financed.” (...) more