Story of a Child

In a small town in the US state of Wisconsin, twenty-year-old telephone operator Carol Truttman gives birth to a child in July 1953. That same night, she gives the boy up for adoption. Daniel, as he is called, remains in the care of social services. Soon the nurses tending to him are confronted with what they see as a serious suspicion: Contrary to the mother’s statement, the baby does not appear to be »white« but, as the official language of the time put it, »Indian«, »Polish« or »negroid« – a scandal in a homogeneously white society subjected to the rigorous laws of racial segregation. The social worker Marlene Winckler, originally from Austria, is tasked with determining the true ethnicity of the child. To do so, however, she must first find the child’s father, whose identity the biological mother refuses to reveal. Neither society nor its institutions do anything to stop her on her obsessive and increasingly destructive search for truth. Readers are as unsparingly confronted with her report, the »file Daniel Truttmann«, as the narrator, a writer with Austrian-Korean roots – whom Daniel’s wife asks to find Marlene Winckler sixty years after these events in order to maybe finally help Daniel, who is now critically ill. The further the narrator delves into Daniel’s story and into the search for Winckler, the more her view of her own past and her family background begins to unravel.

Anna Kim’s Story of a Child is about the powerful and fatal idea of »race«, which not only still shapes societies today, but also permeates the private sphere, divides families, prevents careers and determines life paths. Clever and touching, this novel, based on a true incident, talks about the way we look at one another and about what we believe we see in the other.

»Based on true events, this is a lucid, nuanced and touching exploration of how we look at one another, what we imagine we see when we do, and the continued impact of race on identity, self-image, family and opportunity. With echoes of Lemn Sissay’s My Name is Why, it should have a wide appeal.« New Books in German

»[Anna Kim] poses the question of how a contemporary novel can talk about racism and belonging ... [Story of a Child] provides no easy answers ...« Anke Dörsam, taz am wochenende

»... moving, complex and well suited to keep readers engaged even beyond the last page. The case is not closed once the book is closed.« Martin Oehlen, Frankfurter Rundschau

»Anna Kim has written a cleverly composed [...] book that gives historical depth to the current debates on identity politics.« Katharina Teutsch, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Story of a Child [is] quiet, calm, moving ... Kim’s novel is far from any agitating activism.« Gerrit Bartels, Der Tagesspiegel

»The best Austrian novel of the year ...« Peter Pisa, Der Kurier

»The grating, nowadays completely inappropriate language of the documentation, the subtle, often poetic observations of the frame story, tell of the political in the private sphere – and vice versa. Powerful and topical!« Karin Waldner-Petutschnig, Kleine Zeitung

»Anna Kim attempts to explore several themes on different narrative levels. [...] perceptive and touching.« Carsten Hueck, Deutschlandfunk Kultur