In the video interview, Olga Grjasnowa talks about her début novel Der Russe ist einer der Birken liebt (2012; All Russians Love Birch Trees, 2014). She talks about what it was like to write her first novel and discusses key themes such as the experience of migration, uncertainty about one’s identity and encounters with violence. Here Grjasnowa steadily resists unambiguous assignment to normative constructs such as nation, culture or ethnicity.

This attitude is shared by the novel’s three main characters, Masha, Sami and Tal. They belong to the post-migration generation: their cultural affiliations are hybrid and switch between German, Jewish, Caucasian and oriental. They don’t want to be pinned down to one identity, but this does not seem to liberate them – neither from their family’s demands, social prejudice, the effects of politics nor their own expectations.

After a shattering personal experience, Masha embarks on a lengthy journey to Israel and experiences the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians at first hand. In this precarious world, she looks for stability and finds it in language. “The only thing she can rely on in this situation,” explains Olga Grjasnowa in a video interview about the novel, “is language. The more languages and cultures she knows, the more flexible she is. If something else should happen, she can quickly move to another country and adapt to life there.”