Abstract:

"We call him son" – the nexus of identity, family and migration in Feridun Zaimoğlu's Leyla In the face of nowadays' experiences of contingency and insecurity, family as a construct may serve to establish a point of orientation for individuals in an insecure modernity. This also shows within the recent popularity of family novels in german contemporary literature. However, research mainly focusses on the discussion of german history in it, although the narrative construction of identity in the medium of the family novel is not restricted to this aspect but takes place in so-called migration literature as well, amending Germany's narratives of national pasts with the process of identity formation by immigrants. Widening the dominant perspective on family novels with regard to these aspects can therefore enable a better understanding of nowadays' social reality in Germany. The paper aims to elaborate this point by investigating the nexus of family, migration and identity in Feridun Zaimoğlu's family novel Leyla.

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