Blutbuch

“I needed a space – not even a fictional one, the tilia exists – where I could talk directly to you, a “you” that isn’t really here. Maybe this is What is inherently queer about auto fiction: to start writing from a reality that repeats the fiction that we don’t exist. To start writing from a reality that isn’t real from us, that puts us in the realm of fiction. To produce ourselves through writing, to invent literary spaces, that are other,hyperreal, utterly needed reality. Maybe this is why so many of us write “autofiction”: because we are still stories, because we aren’t real bodies yet.”

Blutbuch

Kim de l’ Horizon’s Blutbuch, winner of the 2022 German Book Prize, is a fascinating, multi-layered, autofictional novel. Part self-discovery, part family history, part queer self-definition. The story of one’s own family, around the ancestors of “Großmeer and “Meer” is complemented by self-reflections of the queer, non-binary narrator – and by sometimes extremely explicit sex scenes. It’s all part of the life of the narrator. I’m not entirely sure it’s really the big triumph of non-binary storytelling. The use of the explicit is coherent, and in context not pornographic, but somehow it also fits the clichés (pos & neg) that recipients of the novel have of queer life. But who am I to judge. It is a great achievement, and I can recommend the novel.