Children from the working-class apartment blocks in northern Bremen know that their families come from Turkey, Russia, Albania. With Carla, things are different.
Her grandmother, Mariam, came from Istanbul as a migrant worker in the 1960s. She has Armenian roots, but no one in the family speaks openly about it. When Mariam dies, Carla discovers a note in her drawer with a female name, a bracelet, and an address in Armenia.
Carla will convince her father to travel together to a homeland that neither of them has ever visited. Following the thread of her family history, Carla discovers an exotic and wild East.
The Armenian genocide, the destruction of Smyrna, the pogrom of ’55. People shriveled by the fear of ethnic cleansings hide their identity, even their name: “On the street, they call us something else. Be glad you can keep your name secret,” Mariam’s mother tells her.
And then the armies of unskilled workers in Germany’s factories, with all the branches of their racist treatment. Behind the strikingly parallel stories of Armenians and Greeks in the 20th century, Tsviertnia gives voice to an entire generation of children and grandchildren of migrant workers.
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