Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. ‘Karagöz in Alamania’, in Mutterzunge (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998)

This short story draws on Özdamar’s play Karagöz in Alamania (1982), one of the author’s first published works, and an important piece of German theatre that premiered in 1986. The story deals with the experiences of ‘Gastarbeiter’ in Germany, including exploring many of the stereotypes used in depictions of migrants in Germany.  Özdamar’s linguistic play with idioms makes the play an excellent means of focusing on the workings of language, and the intertextuality of both play and story with a range of sources from Turkish and German culture lends itself to a transnational view of literature.