Yiza
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
Part dark fairy tale, part mystery, Yiza is the story of three homeless street children on the run. One evening, not long after her arrival in Germany, six-year-old Yiza is abandoned at the market where she spends her days. At a shelter for migrant children she meets two boys, Schamhan and Arian, and together they run away. Trekking through snowy forests and housing settlements, they evade police custody, subsisting on the margins of society and doing whatever it takes to survive.
Both boys are protective of Yiza but are blind to the moral and emotional complexities of their actions. When Yiza falls ill they take shelter in a greenhouse and Arian spends his days begging for food and medicine, but before long they are discovered. When Yiza is illicitly taken into foster care and confined the novel reaches its brutal denouement as we see that Schamhan and Arian will do anything to be reunited with her.
Narrated in simple language and with an innocent charm that belies its social reality, Yiza is a pertinent and timely tale of displacement and suffering.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In K hlmeier's flat novel six-year-old migrant Yiza is abandoned by her uncle in a German city, and she embarks on a confusing, terrifying journey. Coming from an unspecified country, Yiza doesn't speak German, and after the police find her huddled in a restaurant, they take her to a home for migrant children. Despite very kind treatment on her single day there, she inexplicably follows two older boys who plot a successful escape. As they wander the city and navigate language barriers, the teenaged leader, Shamhan, promises to take Yiza and Arian to a well-stocked, warm, and safe home. The trio soon discover they are unprepared for life on their own. Each subsequent plan of theirs offers only temporary relief, and their desperation reaches a crescendo when Yiza falls ill, a real crisis for the homeless, clueless children. While this could be an opportunity to think through the trauma of migration, neglect, and poverty on children, the rapid-fire events and Yiza's unflappable, blank responses to everything blunt the narrative's impact. The tone echoes dark fairy tales of lost children, making even those adults who sincerely want to help appear menacing. Minimal plotting and simple prose belie the harsh realities and horrors in this quick but shallow glimpse into survival at the margins.
