8 Fathers

Does a stepfather stop being a father once your mother leaves him? Is one's biological father a father even if he knows nothing about oneself? Is it possible to choose your father, or do other people choose for you? And how many fathers can anyone actually have? Nico's mother Rosa is no great help in answering these questions. For her, there's only Nico and Rosa, and no one else. "We can be a real family, just the two of us.» And besides, there is Grandma, the chubby Granddad who lives upstairs, and the guinea pig. Eventually they are being joined by Marudur, Nico's stepfather from Sri Lanka, Little-terror-princess Shanti, the little sister, Rebel and his gang, the host family in USA, Rosa's friend Samantha and, last but not least, Hermann Hesse and Johnny Cash. And yet we find Nico at age 19 standing at the door of a row house, clutching a piece of paper with a name on it, trying to decide if she should ring the bell or not. How did she end up here: a journey through the sometimes amusingly colorful world of patchwork families, lives and identities, presented by three narrators in alternating roles, who don't always agree on how to proceed with the story.

In 2010 8 Fathers was acclaimed the renowned Kaas & Kappes Award.