Lena Schätte: Das Schwarz an den Händen meiner Vaters

Lena Schätte: The black on my father's hands

The first-person narrator is called "Motte" by her father. The father is a worker, gambler and drinker. Motte actually has two fathers: one who can run fast, knows all the hiding places when playing and thinks up an answer to every question. And the other, who is transferred from the factory floor to the office so that he doesn't saw his hand off when he's drunk. And the mother says that all the men in the family were like that with alcohol.

Motte has also been drinking more than is good for her for a long time. Even as a child, she played waitress at the Schützenfest and drank the leftovers until she got warm. Now, as a young woman, she sometimes sleeps in the hallway because she can no longer hit the lock with her key. Her boyfriend supports her, but he is usually unable to stand properly himself. Only her brother, who has become an educator, looks after her every day. When her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Motte looks for a way to say goodbye - to her father and to alcohol.

"Das Schwarz an den Händen meines Vaters" by Lena Schätte is a moving novel about growing up in a family that lives in so-called simple circumstances and at the same time sticks together when it counts. It is a tough, tender novel about love for a difficult father and the path to life.

"The impact of the carefully unfolding text is immediate." From the citation for the award of the W. G. Sebald Prize

Lena Schätte, born in Lüdenscheid in 1993, made her debut in 2014 with the novel "Ruhrpottliebe". In the years that followed, she worked as a psychiatric nurse in the Ruhr region until she began studying literary writing at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig in 2020. Today, she cares for addicts in Lüdenscheid - and writes. Lena Schätte was awarded the W.-G.-Sebald-Literaturpreis 2024 for an excerpt from the novel "Das Schwarz an den Händen meines Vaters".

Supported by the Gesellschaft für Literatur in NRW e.V. and the Ministry of Culture and Science NRW