Katherine Volckmer / Airport Code / Take Me Home

 

AIRPORT CODE

Take Me Home

By Katharina Volckmer

IS THERE ANYTHING STRANGER THAN AN AIRPORT? IN OUR AIRPORT CODE SERIES, WRITERS PICK A TRAVEL HUB TO UNRAVEL.

I’ve lived abroad for almost fifteen years, but getting on the plane home never loses the sensation of time travel. Despite all that has changed in and around my hometown — the neighbors and pets that have died, the new cars and house improvements, the grey hair on my father’s head — it will always contain a certain version of me and my life. I return to objects that wouldn’t fit my existence as a foreigner abroad, to conversations and activities I miss and loathe in equal measure. 

Plugging the hole – On “The Appointment” by Katharina Volckmer

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• Julia Christ 
• 10 November 2021

The Appointment, the first novel by Katharina Volckmer, a German writer exiled in London, has dazzled critics and English-speaking audiences^[1]. The book, which tells the story of a woman’s attempt to change her sex, questions the possibility of such a gesture, not in the absolute, but for the German woman who is performing it. Resolutely provocative, mixing sexual fantasies about Hitler and sharp insights into our contemporary society. Julia Christ gives us her reading of Katharina Volckmer’s provocative and satirical parable, over which the shadow of Philip Roth, Woody Allen and Thomas Bernhardt hovers.