CHENNAI : American writer Joan Didion’s question, “Don’t you think people are formed by the landscape they grew up in?” had a great impact on the young German writer Helene Bukowski. “I grew up in Berlin, a city. But, in summer, I always went to the countryside, the northern part of Germany where my grandmother lived. I clearly remember how I would walk through the forest and spend the whole day near the lake. All these experiences I had as a child made me,” shared Helene.
In her debut novel Milk Teeth, she paints the pages green and builds an environment that breathes, reflecting the landscapes that made her. Revisiting her novel on Wednesday at the Goethe-Institut as a part of the recent Meet the Author series, the author, in conversation with environmentalist Arun Krishnamoorthy, turned the event into an evening of introspection for the audience.
“I wrote this book in 2019 and it is nice that I can still talk about it. It is nice to see the characters again as I had spent a lot of time with them. They are kind of real people to me,” shared Helene, who was on her book tour in India.
Into the pages
The book talks about the climate catastrophe in an undisclosed location and during an unidentified period. When she read her words, Helene’s voice reflected the pain and confusion of the characters she had created. Arun labelled her work as “the beginning of climate change in literature,” adding, “In India, nature conservation is much easier to be spoken about, as we have always been taught about our landscape and every celebration is around the landscape.”
Drawing parallels between India and Germany, the author shared that her focus was on the concept of being an outsider and the fact that it is relatable to almost everyone without any discrimination motivated her to continue writing.
She said, “The protagonist Skalde’s mother is an outsider but her father was from the territory. She wants to feel at home, and connects with nature but also wants to connect to the other people who are living in that territory. For me, it was really interesting to write from the point of view of an outsider, and because I think everybody has had this experience of being an outsider and can relate to it. Maybe not particularly with the character’s skin colour or the hair colour.
I think it is important to have that experience, to help people who are outsiders.” The author also ex - plained her writing process and shared that she sees a bit of herself in all the characters she has created. “You have to be inside the characters to feel them and write about them. I started my story with the main character Skalde. I wanted to tell her story but didn’t know how. Taking inspiration from another German author who had put little notes in her book, I decided to portray Skalde’s notes. She is a collector of notes and writes down notes. Then, I draped the story around it.”
Announcing that her book will be a movie soon, Helene concluded, “I didn’t want to be involved in the process of filmmaking because I felt it was nice to give it to someone else. I still wonder what will happen to the images that I had built in my head while writing the characters but, I admire the director Sophia Bösch and am waiting for the work.”