My Father’s Sea

»It was summer, a smell of sea in the air, I was thirteen, my father fell.«

Yunus is thirteen when his father suffers two strokes and is almost completely paralysed. He can only communicate through eye movements. Yunus’s mother cares for him for ten years, first in a facility, then at home, until his death. And Yunus, who has moved out of his parents’ house to study, keeps recalling images from his childhood: experiences and conversations with his father, some of which he didn’t even know he was still holding onto. These images coalesce to form an affectionate portrait of a man who laughed in a loud voice or cursed in Arabic, who was often absent and easily irritable, and who once went from Mardin near the Turkish-Syrian border to Istanbul, where he witnessed the military coup, and eventually arrived in Germany on a cargo ship.

My Father’s Sea tells the story of a stroke of fate that affects an entire family, of a father-son relationship that ends abruptly, of moving and staying, of migration and belonging. Deniz Utlu traces the unexpected vicissitudes of life and memory. His novel is a testament to the power of storytelling—which becomes most evident when language is the last thing you have left.
 

»Impeccably written. Exhilarating. A tranquil inland sea.« Péter Nádas, author of A Book of Memories

»There are no limits to the imagination here. Deniz Utlu achieves this with poetic force and a high level of linguistic sensitivity. He is a great storyteller with a fine ear for a surprising turn of phrase.« Lerke von Saalfeld, FAZ

»My Father’s Sea is an utterly powerful, profound, and moving reflection on the notion of fiction and literature. With captivating language and compelling storytelling, the protagonist takes us on a gripping journey towards reconciliation and remembrance.« Maha El Hissy, literary scholar and critic

»… a literary masterpiece … Deniz Utlu has created a powerful and lasting workof prose. … the latest feat of a new generation of authors who challenge the establishment and its subjects with confidence and great skill.« Andreas Fanizadeh, taz. die tageszeitung

»In touching and humorous language, Deniz Utlu gives us an insight into the conflicts, celebrations, and everyday life of a family. He opens up a geography of memories for German literature that stretches from Hanover deep into Turkey, to the Syrian border.« Jury statement of the Alfred-Döblin-Preis 2021

»His quiet language kept me under its spell, I never switched off, I always knew where things would go«. Mithu Sanyal, jury member at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition 2023 and author of Identitti

»Deniz Utlu champions solidarity, the art of looking closely, and radical vulnerability.« Anja Kümmel, Der Tagesspiegel

»A brilliant, heartwarming book.« Gallus Frei-Tomic, literaturblatt.ch

»For [Father’s Sea], the forty-year-old writer was awarded the Alfred Döblin fellowship by the Berlin Academy of Arts, the most prestigious distinction in Germany for novels that are still in progress, and the perspective he creates of his first-person narrator Yunus […] on the story of his father is one of the most intimate and moving things a reader is likely to find.« Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»It is a book full of grief and respect for the things one can’t know but must try to learn: as a child about one’s parents, as a narrator about one’s characters, as a society about the individuals that live in it.« Marie Schmidt, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»As hazy and ambiguous as the memories are, the love and hope in this gorgeous book are – despite everything – crystal clear.« Der Spiegel

»In his […] third novel, Deniz Utlu has grown more poetic, his protagonist less bolshie, yet the characters remain as vivid as ever.« Jolinde Hüchtker, Die Zeit

»What makes memory possible, how it enriches our lives, how our imagination closes gaps and how all of this eventually transforms into a magnificent novel – this is what Deniz Ultu demonstrates with Father’s Sea.« Joachim Dicks, NDR

»The majority of the people in Germany know very little about Turkish history and the conflict between Turks and Kurds. There is something very important in that story to me. Images are created that are memorable and that communicate something.« Insa Wilke, jury member at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition 2023 on Deniz Ultu’s entry »Damit du sprichst«

»Utlu’s text for the Bachmann competition, an excerpt from his forthcoming novel Father’s Sea, gives occasion to think about intertwining Kurdish-Turkish-German (hi)stories and literature(s). Apart from Yaşar Kemal, it contains references to the Kurdish history of [Yunus’s] mother and grandfather, which is kept silent, or the Kurdish city of Mardin near the Syrian border. When the protagonist talks about a Kurdish poet from Iraq who lives in exile in Hannover, a Kurdish-Arabic story also inscribes itself into German literary history.« Ela Gezen, University, of Massachusetts Amherst, USA & Maha El Hissy, University of Munich in taz. die tageszeitung