Description

"What kind of countryman are you?!” "I come from Persia." "Brazil? But you don't look like an Indian!" "No, Persia, Iran!" "Oh, Iran! You are a Muslim!” "No!" "No? Are there also Christians in Turkey?” In his pointed short stories and snapshots, Mahmood Falaki humorously outlines encounters between people from different cultures. With an ironically distanced look, he describes comical dialogues and misunderstandings that arise from the different perspectives of the protagonists and encourage us to reconsider entrenched perspectives and prejudices. The stories deal with the banalities and absurdities of the everyday life of "foreigners" in Germany. With all the comedy, however, it also gets down to business: while reading the poetic and cleverly told stories, laughter can sometimes get stuck in your throat...

Reviews and press:

The title "I'm a foreigner and that's a good thing" is reminiscent of the outing of former Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit. That was intentional, says Christine Gorny. The title plays with this motif and expresses the fact that Mahmood Falaki wants to go on the offensive just as fearlessly as Klaus Wowereit did back then. The title also makes it clear that Falaki does not want to tell a depressive tale of suffering, but rather to confidently describe his experiences as a foreigner in Germany. His short stories are snapshots - disturbing, forgiving, connecting - but always with a good sense of punchlines.

Falaki's stories are not so much about open xenophobia, but about everyday, subtle, unconscious exclusion, about the fear of the other that exists on both sides. […]

– Christine Gorny, Radio Bremen

[…] Despite all the wonderful wit, Falaki never loses his grip on the ground and gets to the point. The heavy is heavy, the light is light and all that is sometimes completely different. But Mahmood Falaki also manages to uncover often unconscious prejudices. Sooner or later you get the feeling: No, it's not always the others who make it difficult for foreign fellow citizens. Sometimes it's me who is afraid, who is overly cautious, who judges too quickly and thinks I know everything. The author doesn't explain himself, doesn't apologize, doesn't enlighten us about his stories. He deliberately leaves it open whether it is truth or fiction, giving us the freedom to decide for ourselves what we want to believe. This is precisely where the appeal lies, and what reads so superficially as light entertainment becomes at the same time very thought-provoking reading. I'm happy about this book precisely because it comes across as so self-confident, because it doesn't squirm or duck, doesn't accuse and doesn't whine. Mahmood Falaki is a very precise observer and knows exactly which shoe pinches where.

– Anne Fitsch, Insight March – May 2016

The Iranian-born writer, poet and literary scholar Mahmood Falaki, who has been living in Germany since 1983, develops in his stories and poems the specific perspective of a foreigner who, when encountering other expellees as well as Germans, plays the patient and often astonished dialogue partner . Patient, because his first-person narrator in "I'm a foreigner and that's a good thing" seeks to talk to older German contemporaries in the subways of Hamburg and Berlin. His motive? He is repeatedly asked about his origins and nationality. Reason enough to check the geographical knowledge of the people you are talking to and, from time to time, just for fun, to fool them into another identity. […] more

– Wolfgang Schlott, The Leaflet

clean slate:

For Mahmood Falaki, who has lived in Germany since 1983, author of numerous novels, short stories and volumes of poetry, holds a doctorate in literary studies and is an editor of Persian textbooks, being a stranger in a cultural landscape that he has become familiar with for over forty years is associated with a supposedly fatal risk. The vague influences of his cultural origins mix with feelings of existential insecurity, which are reflected in the use of a special colloquial language. (…) more