Transnational Asthetik-des-turkischen-Alltags: Emine Sevgi Ozdamar's Das 'Leben ist eine Karawanserei'

As one of the most widely written about works of literature in German by a migrant author, Ozdamar's Karawanserei has been used to illustrate a wide r ange of socio-critical theories. This essay probes the novel's scholarly re ception and, within the framework of aesthetic theory, demonstrates its art istic structuring. Showing how the author aesthetically transfigures the or dinary (Alltag) yields the first systematic assessment of her creative achi evement. This approach also raises the broader issue of the tendency in Ger man Studies to neglect literary analysis, especially in relation to migrant writing.