Meral Kureyshi: Postal code: 3000

"I don't want any consolation, it's humiliating." About halfway through Meral Kureyshi's new novel, this sentence comes up that stays with you. It is spoken by Lili, a woman over 90 years old who has recently moved into a nursing home. She is the secret center of the book, and between the first signs of dementia, she raises questions that our society tries to suppress: How can we grow old with dignity? Who will care for us one day?

"I'm that kind of someone," says the nameless first-person narrator. She is the friend of Lili's daughter Klara and says: "What isn't offered in the old people's home, I'll take care of." From then on, she goes on trips with Lili, invites her home for dinner, listens to her when old memories of love affairs come up. A community of solidarity develops between the women, a care relationship, an elective affinity against isolation. And it is not the only one. The first-person narrator also shares an apartment with Klara and raises her son with her, whose violent father Klara has broken with. "We have become the parents we never wanted to be," she once says.

In episodic scenes, the Bernese writer Meral Kureyshi weaves a network of relationships that leaves you in awe. At the end, you wonder how so many pressing questions fit into just under 200 pages. One answer lies in Kureyshi's laconic language. With just a few words, she creates scenes of existential force. And instead of making the connection between herself and the first-person narrator explicit, as is currently en vogue, Kureyshi merely hints at their shared Turkish mother tongue: "This old language that the Ottomans left us as a thank you." There are many poetic one-liners that you would like to have tattooed on your forearm: "I run somewhere as fast as possible to get somewhere else." Or: "We rinsed our mouths with sweet drinks as if we were brushing our teeth."

Meral Kureyshi, born in 1983 in Prizren in present-day Kosovo to parents from the Turkish-speaking minority, has lived in Bern since 1992 and became famous in 2015 with her debut novel Elephants in the Garden . She has again achieved a great success with her third novel . She is and remains one of the most important voices in contemporary Swiss literature.

Meral Kureyshi: We were never in the sea. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 2025; 216 pages, 30,– Fr., 26,– €