Vom »Chindlifrässer«-Brunnen nach Tahiti

Abstract

In the last decade, colonial and postcolonial topics, as well as questions of multi-cultural change, have been discussed frequently in the public sphere in Switzerland. For contempo- rary Swiss authors, questions of otherness and of colonial violence are an important concern. Along with Martin R. Deans Meine Vater and Lukas Barfuss’ Hundert Tage , Lukas Hartmanns Bis ans Ende der Meere is a significant example for the new postcolonial agenda in Swiss Literature. Hartmann’s protagonist is a fellow traveller of Captain Cooks second expedition to the South Sea; and his reports, as staged within Hartmann’s novel, give an impressive testimony of the predicaments of encounter in colonial situations.