«ORIGIN is a book about the first coincidence in our biography: being born somewhere. And about what happens afterwards.
ORIGIN is a book about the places that are my home, the ones in my memory and the ones I have invented. It is a book about language, moonlighting, youth and many summers. The summer when my grandfather trod on my grandmother’s foot while dancing in such a way that I was almost never born. The summer when I nearly drowned. The summer when Angela Merkel opened the borders and which was very like the summer when I fled across many borders to Germany.
ORIGIN is a farewell to my grandmother with her dementia. While I am collecting my memories she is losing hers.
ORIGIN is sad because for me origin has got something to do with what I can no longer have.
My biographic writings, also this text, are like the name on the doorbell of a man long since dead that I can no longer remember – an attempt to preserve something that used to be important. To preserve it, but also to develop it further in one’s mind, to get to the bottom of it.»