The experience of “The Other” has become a common one for people in the 21st century, and yet it continues to be a major problem for everyone involved. Increasingly, however, immigrants and their descendants adjust and soon participate in and with the new culture(s). At the same time, those who encounter “The Other” through the contact with immigrants, have also to adapt, to learn, and to realize considerable changes in themselves in that process. Recently, a new German novelist, Renate Ahrens, has created several major works in which she reflects on this intricate phenomenon typical of our times. The present study might well be the first critical analysis of her last two novels, Zeit der Wahrheit (Time of Truth, 2005) and Fremde Schwestern (Alienated Sisters, 2011), which prove to be outstanding and first-rate literary treatments of the theme of “The Other” in an intercultural context. As Ahrens illustrates in both novels, each individual carries a heavy baggage imposed on them by the own family history, and so in both cases the confrontation with “The Other” serves exceedingly well to break open the shell of self-isolation and self-alienation. Love finally overcomes ancient conflicts and paves the way for new integrative forces supporting the formation of the “global village” we all are really living in.
　　Keywords: “The Other”, immigration, foreign culture(s), Renate Ahrens, German novelist, German literature, postmodern literature
　　 Introduction: The Foreign World and the Self Today
　　The global situation today is deeply, almost painfully, determined by the international flow of migration. All Western countries experience heavy immigrations, legal and illegal, which creates tensions and conflicts everywhere, or constitute, in neutral terms, challenges. But Arabic countries also witness strong influxes of foreigners mostly as workers. So this is not an exclusively Western phenomenon, but the result of global imbalances in economic terms, military conflicts, and religious persecutions. The receiving cultures feel various pressures, the own identity often seems to be at stake, conservative politicians are calling for strict new measures to stem the flood of immigrants, while, oddly, the flow of Western tourists to the countries where some of those immigrants are coming from is growing as well. Whether any of this is good or bad, productive or not, whether there might be strategies to help people improve their lives back home so much that they do not need to leave and cross dangerous territories or bodies of water and then hostile borders, in order to establish better lives in the new world, does not need to be discussed here.
　　Instead, the issue of central concern here will be the experience of the foreign at large as an epistemological phenomenon which can prove to be the catalyst for the discovery of the self, and this in psychological, mental-historical, political, religious, and social-economic terms. Insofar as many individuals today appear to have great difficulties to accept themselves or to understand who they really are, the contrastive exposure to other people and other cultures has often had a surprising effect overcoming profound alienation within the own self. Poets and writers have consistently dealt with this fundamental issue, the clash between self and other, so it does not come as a surprise that this theme continues to occupy the minds of contemporary authors as well (Wierlacher, 1985; Long, 1986; Demarest Button & Reed, 1999; Pettegree, 2011). Oddly enough, in this Postmodern world where cultural conflicts continue to vex us considerably, actually in some areas increasingly leading to violence by individuals and groups against minorities, this very contact among different cultures provokes and stimulates at the same time and transforms both the receiving and the giving cultures in a productive way. In fact, Western society has witnessed profound changes in its approaches to, handling of, and dealing with migrants, immigrants, asylum seekers, and hence also with an astonishing permeation of society by many people. Mixed marriages and children from parents of different races are no longer completely exceptional, on the contrary. Wherever one goes, there are ethnic restaurants, and ethnic communities, and newspapers from all over the world can be purchased at stands, while schools everywhere witness a steadily growing number of pupils from many different countries and with different mother tongues. Some of the most important inspirations for any national literature, music, and the arts seem to come from those with a “Migrationshintergrund” (who originate from abroad). The big question that looms large on the horizon virtually all over the Western World and elsewhere concerns integration, tolerance, communication, or the very absence of all of them, resulting in xenophobia, hatred, and violence. Language issues also matter, and so does religion. After all, as the common saying goes, we live in a “global village”, which is hard to accept for some people, and which is enthusiastically welcomed by others.
　　Many of these topics deeply influence and determine what is being discussed in much of Postmodern literature, and there is no shortage of critical studies dealing with those topics at large (Tawada, 1996; Dietsche, 1984; Antor, 2007; G?ktürk, Gramling, & Kaes, 2007; Langenohl, 2011; from the eastern perspective, Braginsky & Murtagh, 2007). As a side note, the premodern world was not completely isolated from those problems either, and had its own share of tensions and problems, involving the Jewish population, the Sinti and Roma (formerly pejoratively called “Gypsies”), but then also people from neighboring countries and continents. Only recently, for instance, have we begun to learn about the role of African blacks in Italy during the late Middle Ages and of white slaves in a variety of Mediterranean countries, including the Ottoman Empire (Bell, Suckow,& Wolf, 2010; Bisaha, 2004; for medieval perspectives, see Classen, 2002).
　　 A New Literary Voice From Germany Dealing With the Other in Confrontation With the Self
　　Here the author would like to examine two novels recently published by a new German writer who has hardly gained any critical acclaim yet but who promises to be recognized soon as a major voice in the German-speaking world, especially in light of all of those aspects mentioned above. Renate Ahrens has so far published mostly novels for young readers, but has recently turned to novels for adult readers in which she explores powerful themes with a deeply refreshing new perspective. On her own web page, she introduced herself as follows:
　　Renate Ahrens, born in Herford, Germany, in 1955, studied English and French at the universities of Marburg, Lille and Hamburg. She worked as a teacher for a few years, before she and her husband moved to Dublin in 1986. Since then she has been a freelance writer. She writes novels, stage plays and German-English children’s books. In 1996-1997 she lived in Cape Town and in 2002-2003 in Rome, and is now based in Dublin and Hamburg. Renate Ahrens is a member of the P.E.N. Centre of German-Speaking Writers Abroad. (Retrieved from http://www.renate-ahrens.de/biography.html)
　　She has also published plays and radio and TV programs for children, yet her recent emphasis seems to rest
　　on novels. In 2003 appeared Der Wintergarten (The Winter Garden), followed by Zeit der Wahrheit (Time of Truth) in 2005, and most recently, Fremde Schwestern (Alienated Sisters) in 2011. They all explore human relationships and center on individuals who face deeply hidden problems that suddenly come to the surface when the external life conditions change, because the protagonists are suddenly confronted by people, cultures, issues, and ideas outside of their familiar horizon. In our context, Ahrens’ last two novels prove to be the most interesting insofar as they explore topics of greatest relevance in our modern existence, because they illustrate in a moving and powerful way how much the “global village” interacts with all of us and gets us all involved as a result of intercultural contacts.
　　 Zeit der Wahrheit: A German in South Africa
　　Let us begin with a brief summary of Zeit der Wahrheit, which intriguingly reflects on personal connections between Germans and the people of South Africa during the last half century. A young single woman, the journalist Pia Lessings, hears the name “Zoe” uttered by her father as his last word before he dies. After much research she finds out and suddenly remembers that Zoe used to be her nanny while the family lived in South Africa. When she was four, they abruptly returned home, and from then on no one ever mentioned the past experiences again. Naturally, when the opportunity arises, the journalist immediately assumes an assignment to report about the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, set up in 1995 after the fall of Apartheid, which allows her to search for this Zoe.1 The novel thus opens up multiple narrative strands that constantly meet and intertwine, combining personal events with public and political events.
　　Soon Pia encounters a journalist, Jonathan, with whom she falls in love. He begins to help her in the search for the old nanny, whom they ultimately can discover, indeed. In the process, the two people begin to develop a close emotional bond and it appears as if they might decide to live together at the end, although this is not clearly developed because it is of very little importance. As it turns out, Pia’s father used to have a love affair with that colored nanny, while his wife was not able to be affectionate in any way and threatened to commit suicide if he did not stop that affair. Tragically, however, Zoe was already pregnant, but since those two lovers had been afraid of becoming responsible in a way for his wife’s death, they broke off their relationship, and the German family quickly moved back home. Although Pia’s father tried several times to reconnect with Zoe, the two had no chance, especially because Zoe’s father had threatened her with expulsion from the family and would have exploded if she had admitted her love for the white man. Zoe’s son Adam never learned the whole truth and hated his biological father, because the young man, as a person of mixed races, never had a full chance to develop his life in South Africa.
　　The novel concludes with Pia at first planning to return to Germany in order to organize her life and to explore options how to meet up with her lover again. But then Zoe, already suffering from cancer in the intestines, dies of the shock resulting from the news that her son had murdered a woman. During the funeral ceremony Pia finally understands that she cannot play a careful card and hope for the best for a long-distance relationship. Instead, following Zoe’s advice, she is ready to give love a true chance and might not return home to Germany, to her old job, her old family structure, and her old social environment. After all, as she realizes, and as the writer indicates with this novel, the prison in which herself had been caught can or must be overcomed through the confrontation with the other, the foreign, which produces innovative and inspiring motivation, hope, and new idealism. While Pia had a boyfriend (Klaus) back home, this relationship had already collapsed over her failed pregnancy. Her new boyfriend Jonathan, similarly to Pia, suffers from personal isolation and loss of a child in metaphorical terms (deliberate alienation created by the biological mother), and we could imagine that the new couple might start a fresh life together, perhaps even bringing a child of their own to this world.
　　Interestingly, when the protagonist has begun to acclimatize to South Africa after her arrival, she observes one little scene which sheds much light on the new conditions in that country. While spending time in the botanical garden, she sees a young couple running by her, he white and she black, both around 20 years old, who then openly and freely kiss each other. Moreover, she notices that many people of different races spend time in the garden, clearly a sign of changing cultural conditions in that country (Ahrens, 2005, p. 69).
　　Embarking on the search for her former nanny Zoe, Pia visits the famous District-Six Museum in Cape Town, where the Apartheid government had torn down a whole district of black and other people to make room for whites. By 1982, more than 60,000 people had been forcefully moved into the squalor of distant townships, so the museum now documents that horrible history.2 While talking with the curator Charlie Rive, and reflecting on the atrocity that had been committed in South Africa, she tells him that she is from Germany, which provokes him to remark: “Also a beautiful country with a dark history” (Ahrens, 2005, p. 66; the author’s translation, here and following), a direct allusion to the Holocaust. As the entire novel indicates, past and present always intertwine, and the attractiveness of the natural environment cannot hide the horrors that might have happened in that country, brought about by the people. Moreover, as this brief exchange also signals, no country, no people, and no individual can completely claim to be free of all transgressions or to be free from all temptations to transgress. Although Ahrens would certainly not want to equate the Holocaust with Apartheid, she argues for a more historical and comparative perspective concerning past suffering, subjugation, dictatorship, and racism.
　　Ironically, the protagonist is regularly confronted with German tourists who behave like tourists always tend to do, being loud, ignorant, boorish, and selfish, demonstrating an astonishing degree of cultural insensitivity, not displaying any awareness about the social and economic conditions of the new environment. Pia, however, having been born in Cape Town and having to endure her mother’s extremely cold treatment, while being haunted by the wonderful memories of the loving and caring nanny Zoe, finds herself in the middle of all the cultural tensions, especially because she falls in love with that journalist Jonathan. He has also a major conflict in his life, being separated from his former girlfriend in New York who has forbidden him any contact with their son, and projecting the father as a monster to the young boy. Jonathan, being from South Africa, had returned to that country only a year ago, and now he suffers badly from the separation from his child. At the same time, as we learn in the course of the narrative, he is alienated from his parents, whites, because they do not agree with the new post-Apartheid policy, still adhering to the old racist ideology.
　　The novel increasingly reveals where the true problems rest, that is, in the devastating family structures of the old days, in the lack of love between parents and children, and in the loss of love between husband and wife. Pia realizes the huge void in her life only once she has left Germany, while for Jonathan that loneliness had hit him as soon as he had arrived in South Africa, after he had been forced to abandon his own child, because he had not been married to the mother. Both protagonists prove to be deeply wounded souls who now slowly begin to recover their own self through the love which grows between them. Ultimately, however, Pia’s search for her old nanny creates the essential basis for these two people to work together in the quest, which connects her with many people in Cape Town of different races. The novel culminates in the critical scene where Pia talks with her old nanny who alerts her to the great need for all people to give love a chance, because she herself had failed, along with Pia’s father, to follow their dream (Ahrens, 2005, p. 273). The author successfully combines the personal drama with the drama of the entire country, insofar as the global effort by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to establish peace and, as its label states, to reconciliate, to close the abyss between the races, and to start reconstructing a new society, finds its reflection in Pia’s personal efforts to retrace the history of her family and to overcome the drama that overshadowed her whole life.
　　The bitter relationship between her parents, oddly locked together on the basis of moral obligations, not through the power of love, proves to be the major cause for the female protagonist for having failed in establishing a positive relationship in her own life. As she has to realize at the end, her father had truly loved Zoe, completely irrespective of their racial differences, and had wanted to separate from his wife, which then, however, had not been possible because of the suicide threats. As Ahrens conveys through this novel, Zeit der Wahrheit, the time for truth has arrived for everyone involved here because they all come together from different worlds and finally realize the enormous need to allow the past to be revealed without casting an eternal shadow on the present.
　　Pia recognizes how much her parents had greatly profited from the Apartheid system in economic terms, although they had come from Germany. But her father had also discovered that he did not love his wife, who could never develop or demonstrate any warm feelings for him. Although her father kept this a secret for the rest of his life, he had truly loved once, the nanny Zoe. Tragically for them, the racial differences would have made it impossible for both to live out their love, either in South Africa or in Germany, because external racism would have prevented them from realizing their dream. In a way that was the reason for Pia’s inability to bond with any man in her own life, because she had lost the one person with whom she had felt an emotional bond, her nanny Zoe, truly a caring person, while Pia’s biological mother was not capable of reaching out to her own daughter.
　　Ahrens here presents a fascinating novel which explores the impact of old scars resulting from a horrible racist society. The political structure of South Africa had deeply influenced lives, forcing the German man to abandon his one and only true love, Zoe, and to move back to Germany with his wife to whom he only had felt committed to due to moral and ethical concerns. As Pia realizes, her own, newly found happiness did not grow out of the security of her job or her professional success, but out of the ability to move into a different cultural world. Only there is she finally able to accept herself, because she reconnects with the love which she feels so profoundly for her old nanny, and because she discovers true love for the journalist Jonathan.
　　The book is properly entitled Zeit der Wahrheit—Time for Truth. This complex truth is being unraveled in South Africa during Pia’s stay in that country, while she works reporting about the hearings set up by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and, more important, while she carries out her own investigations of her personal past intimately connected with South Africa. Once the truth has been revealed, both of the previous horrors committed in that country and of the repressed childhood experienced by Pia, reconciliation can set in, even if only tentatively so, because both the country itself and the protagonist encounter their personal history and acknowledge it as part of their own identity, without losing the perspective toward the future. This is precisely the same issue for all those immigrants who feel more or less as new members of their chosen country and thus, in a way, also have to accept the country’s history with all its pluses and minuses (see the introduction in Langenohl, 2011, pp. 36-38). The central point proves to be that the modern heterogeneous society turns into a location with“Erz?hlgemeinschaften” (communities of narrators) where the past is kept alive by way of narrative accounts(Langenohl, 2011, p. 37). Not surprisingly, that is precisely the critical point which determines literature in the best sense of the word (Harzig, 2006, pp. 7-19; Gramling, 2009).
　　Nevertheless, there is hope, both for South Africa and for the protagonist since she finally allows love to determine her life, instead of any external family bonds, social obligations, and professional constraints. As we learn from this novel, the extraordinary experience of cultural, racial, and linguistic otherness can remove the lid that keeps all history bottled up, and once the secrets have come out, both of the Apartheid police and terror, and of Pia’s tormented family history, the world experiences, even if only in small steps, a remarkable transformation. As terrifying and fear-inducing Pia’s first few days in South Africa appear to be, faced with the squalor of the townships, the masses of poor people, her inability to speak with many of the native population, and the foreignness of the cityscape of Cape Town, ultimately the very exposure to that foreign world allows her to reconnect to her own childhood and thus to establish a new basis in her self which makes it possible for her to embrace true feelings of love.
　　 The Foreign Comes to the Self: Alienated Sisters Find Themselves
　　In Fremde Schwestern, the “foreign” suddenly and unexpectedly enters the protagonist’s comfortable world at home and forces her to rediscover her own identity, to analyze her family’s past, and hence to reorientate herself thoroughly, whereby she ultimately finds herself and also gains the inner strength to accept love in her life after all (see the author’s review, forthcoming in Trans-Lit2). The writer captures her readers’ attention immediately with the young woman Lydia appearing one early morning at the door to her sister Franka’s apartment in Hamburg, Germany. After having spent many years living in South Africa, India, and Nepal, surviving by means of menial jobs, living with suspect boyfriends, and finally through prostitution, she has now returned with her seven-year-old daughter Merle, because she knows of her imminent death. Her illness is rather complex, yet could be handled if she completely submitted to the doctors’ advice and care. Suffering from Hepatitis C, she desperately needs a liver transplantion, but it takes much time to find a donor organ, more time than the patient is willing to invest. Consequently, at the end Lydia rather follows her own dreams and travels back to India with a new boyfriend, Chris, hoping to regain her health there with the help of a mysterious, if not voodoo, healer. As to be expected, this plan fails utterly, and Lydia suddenly dies of a hematorrhea.
　　As much as these two sisters hate each other, both representing strongly different cultural values, and this already since their childhood, Franka must now take care of her niece, who shares many character features with her mother. At first she does so very grudgingly, yet then she realizes how much this girl represents her own blood, so she finally goes so far as to accept her virtually as her own daughter when Lydia has died. Basically, Lydia had always tried to develop the artist in herself, but since she had lacked inner discipline and self-control, she has basically failed in all her efforts, hence finally has to seek refuge with her sister, although the latter’s orderly lifestyle proves to be almost repulsive for her. Franka, on the other hand, leads a rather superficial life as a successful writer of scripts for television films who has built a secure existence within a stable bourgeois environment. However, this also means that she cannot open up to her own boyfriend, Jan, and always keeps a safe distance to all people. For instance, she never gives him a key to her apartment, that is, until her life has been profoundly transformed through the appearance (and death) of Lydia and of Merle.
　　The young girl grudgingly accepts the necessity to live with her aunt, because she has no alternative, with her mother lying in the hospital and later living in social housing by herself, too weak to take care of her own daughter. By the same token, her aunt, Franka, is deeply challenged by this different kind of young person who indirectly forces her to change her world view and attitude toward life. As much as the novel focuses on these two sisters, the true protagonist proves to be Merle, because she represents a kind of foreigner in this novel, and yet still is her aunt’s closest relative. She has spent her formative years as a child abroad, under highly suspect conditions, yet she seems to have enjoyed her life there and now idealizes her past in those distant, exotic countries as the only mental refuge for her to maintain the former identity. In the course of the novel, however, a remarkable rapprochement process takes place involving both sisters and the young girl, ultimately because both sides begin to accept the foreign element in the respective other and thereby discover a part of themselves they had not yet known.
　　The narrative really hinges on the conflictual conditions in their old family, with the father having cared little for the daughters, especially not for the thieving and lying Lydia, while the mother had clearly given preference to the younger one, Lydia, who seemed to represent her own dreams of turning into an artist. Franka had no real alternative but to struggle as hard as possible to achieve the best possible grades in school and then to move on to the university and subsequently to find a job, establishing her own life free from her parents’debilitating influence. Having grasped the profound injustice already from early on, she had developed a strong hatred of her sister, which carries over to heir adult life. Curiously, she emphasizes toward her friend Esther that she had loved her sister in their early youth, but then this all had turned to hatred because of extenuating circumstances. Nevertheless, as Esther observes, even in this form of hatred the two sisters appear to her as very similar (Ahrens, 2011, p. 38).
　　Franka has a very hard time coming to terms with her niece, whom she oddly loves and yet also rejects at the same time. On the one hand, right at the beginning, she carries her emaciated body to the sofa to give her a better sleeping accommodation, suddenly sensing maternal feelings. On the other, she mistrusts her and is even suspicious of her that she could steal money (Ahrens, 2011, pp. 42-43). As much as they are both closely related, as little do they know how to build a bridge of trust between them, especially because Merle represents a foreign world, a foreign culture, and foreign memories, having lived most of her young life in South Africa, India, and Nepal. Nevertheless, she is Franka’s niece, and despite all tensions, conflicts, and problems, eventually these two people open up to each other and begin to develop a closer relationship. This is also the case between the two sisters, although they are worlds apart in their attitude, character, dreams, and ideals. However, the artistic talent in Lydia also comes forward in her daughter, and since Franka’s boyfriend is a musician, the young girl finds a chance to live out that ability, playing her own songs on the piano.
　　Most interesting proves to be the way Ahrens explains how the slow disappearance of the mutual hostility is made possible, insofar as this might represent a fascinating model case at large for how people from different cultures, races, genders, and age groups can find ways to communicate with each other after all, leading to mutual respect and acknowledgment. Merle carries over her mother’s hatred for Franka without understanding any of the reasons that go far back to both their own childhoods in a basically broken home. However, Franka has never had a child of her own, apparently because of her fear to get too close to another person, to be committed, and to share love (Ahrens, 2011, p. 168). At one point, for instance, we learn that her father’s death had hurt her deeply, not because she had simply loved him, but rather because she had waited all her life in vain to receive her father’s love, which never happened (Ahrens, 2011, p. 119). Without that love she was obviously afraid of a child, because she would not be able to love it, just as her father had rejected Lydia outright.
　　Now, however, the situation is different since Merle is simply “thrown into her lap”, and she must take care of her. Yet that girl hates her for quite some time until her aunt suddenly hits on the brilliant idea of taking Merle to the zoo, where the first decisive transformation in the girl takes place, because she is suddenly confronted with many animals that remind her of the time in India. Especially the monkeys lighten up her entire personality since she used to have a pet monkey in the past. Full of joy she beams at her aunt: “I had such a monkey, just like that”(Ahrens, 2011, p. 86). Franka smiles back and thinks by herself: “For a moment I am no longer an enemy”(Ahrens, 2011, p. 86). Surprisingly, but significantly, when the two take a break, they order a coke, a soft drink which Franka otherwise would have never ordered out of health concerns. As she later comments to her boyfriend,“Sometimes one can make an exception” (Ahrens, 2011, p. 89). In fact, the requirement to deal with her niece in practical terms forces this woman to abandon some of her traditional strictures and to let things go as they come. She does not realize that she thus assumes some of the characteristics of her sister, who had freely roamed the world and had slept with many men without any care, until she had become pregnant, her only true desire, not caring for a husband. Of course, both Lydia and Franka represent fundamental differences in their personalities and cultural values, but in Merle, who seems to combine the foreign with the familiar, a combination of both emerges, as the subsequent scene in Jan’s apartment illustrates.
　　Merle immediately espies the piano and wants to play on it, which Jan, being a professional musician, strictly prohibits. However, he invites her to accompany him with her voice while he is playing, and so we learn that Merle knows her childhood songs in English, which Franka laconically comments quietly: “More than one language” (Ahrens, 2011, p. 91), observing a striking difference to herself. In another episode, very trivial by itself, Franka realizes to her astonishment that Merle had always brushed her own teeth when she lived in Nepal. This degree of “civilization” in that distant country astonishes her aunt, who thus reveals her own cultural ignorance in that moment and has to accept the girl’s criticism (Ahrens, 2011, p. 115). Step by step Franka’s life also changes, because she has to adapt to Merle. For instance, she even begins to make a warm lunch (spaghetti), what she has never done before (Ahrens, 2011, p. 122). Most significantly, she also buys a gift for her niece, a toy monkey, which creates instantaneous happiness in the girl, because it reminds her of the pet animal back in India(Ahrens, 2011, p. 123). This also encourages Merle to talk about their life there, where her mother had sold self-made jewelry. Merle had a friend called Bakul, the son of another street vendor, and Bakul owned a cobra which he made to rise out of a basket and dance when he played on his flute.
　　Ahrens here evokes the stereotypical image of the exotic Orient, but the critical aspect quickly proves to be the radical contrast between both sisters. While Lydia had roamed the world as a free-wheeler, Franka had stayed home, studied, and started with her career. But now, full of admiration she admits to Merle that she in her age had never been abroad (Ahrens, 2011, p. 126), and now she can only invite the girl to go to the Baltic Sea for vacation sometime in the future, which seems pedestrian in comparison to what Lydia had exposed her daughter to. The narrator, however, does not evaluate this huge difference; instead we only observe how much the foreign world and the ordinary existence in Germany begin to approximate each other, and on that basis the relationship between Merle and her aunt improves considerably. As Franka admits to herself, after a very ordinary dinner with Jan and her niece, during which her older boyfriend and her niece enjoyed a simple conversation about Merle’s life in India, she wished she could slip out of her own skin and simply be happy about Jan’s ability to interact harmoniously with the child (Ahrens, 2011, p. 141).
　　Intriguingly, however, this very process slowly takes place, as reflected not only by Franka’s increasing confidence in dealing with her niece and her own sister, but also by her ability to rewrite her movie script in a meaningful way. While before her supervisor had disliked her crime story because it had distributed good and evil in a too simplified manner, she begins to change the narrative plot and includes sufficient elements that reveal how much the situation in her script actually falls between the two extremes, indicating that even the best intentions could lead to a devastating outcome, and vice versa. In her own words: “The perpetrator also ought to be a victim. Or the female perpetrator” (Ahrens, 2011, p. 156). Fittingly, in the reality outside of Franka’s script she observes a new truce between her and Lydia (Ahrens, 2011, pp. 159-160), although countless problems continue to torture both sisters. Simultaneously the tensions with her boyfriend mostly disappear, and Merle is eventually even allowed to play on his piano, where she suddenly demonstrates a remarkable musical skill. The melody that she plays she had learned from her friend Baku, who had used it to charm his snake back in India(Ahrens, 2011, p. 173). For Jan this is a frightening scenario because he is afraid of snakes, while Merle had had only an eye for the beautiful movements of the cobra and so continues not to fear snakes.
　　In the course of time, the two sisters begin to talk more openly to each other and Lydia shares some of her horror experiences in Nepal, where she had prostituted herself to earn enough money for the flight home to Germany (Ahrens, 2011, pp. 191-192). Subsequently the narrator takes us back to the childhood years of both sisters, revealing one major problem after the other incurred by the young Lydia, from theft to lying, finally to taking drugs. But we also gain insight into the painful tensions between them, resulting from mutual jealousy often quite typical for young girls and women, pertaining to the first boyfriends, the different body shapes, and the like. However, the old conflicts are now more safely couched in the narrative itself and no longer mutually hurt their feelings, especially because the central focus rests on Merle, her interest in playing piano, and her need to lead an ordinary life, going to school, making friends, etc.
　　Ultimately, however, in a radical shift, Lydia breaks off all her medical treatment and escapes, together with her boyfriend Chris, to India where she hopes to experience a miraculous healing from a sacred man. Of course, this dream quickly proves to be nothing but self-illusion and she suddenly dies of her Hepatitis C. Franka’s boyfriend, Jan, who always proves to be the calmer, more insightful character, is the first to formulate his idea why Lydia left Germany so abruptly, “in order to die in India” (Ahrens, 2011, p. 273). Although Franka expresses her deep disappointment, Jan alerts her to a different perspective: “Franka, there is no right and wrong. Lydia is different from you. Who would guarantee that she might survive a severe operation [here in Germany]?” (Ahrens, 2011, pp. 273-274). Moreover, Jan also commented: “Lydia is more capable than you to let go. This also pertains to death” (Ahrens, 2011, p. 274).
　　It is precisely at this point where the foreign world dramatically confronts the German existence, almost like death confronts life, as Merle recounts one of her mother’s fundamental desires: “Rather to die in India than here. Mama has always wanted to die in India” (Ahrens, 2011, p. 282). Subsequently, when a postcard arrives, Franka also finds out where Lydia had lived in India, before her return to Germany, in Varanasi, a most holy town, as she learns from Google online: “Varanasi is one of the holiest cities and targets of pilgrimage for Hindus. As the place where Siddhartha Gautama gave his first sermon to his disciples, Varanasi is the city where Buddhism was founded”.3
　　In that moment, Franka also remembers that Lydia had converted to Buddhism, which makes her final move, the escape from Germany, leaving her own daughter behind, comprehensible. But the term “escape” might be too harsh, since she really knew that she was dying. Once she had realized that Merle had found a good home and was loved by her aunt, she could die more calmly. All three, the young girl, her aunt, and Jan subsequently travel to Varanasi and say goodbye in symbolic terms to the dead woman, so they return precisely to the same location/country where the dead sister had lived out her dream, typical of Western Orientalism and characteristic of the hippie movement during the 1960s to 1980s (Murti, 2001).
　　Back in Hamburg, we observe a very different scene. Merle leads a quiet life, rather withdrawn and mourning, but she has found a new “father” in Jan who loves to take care of her and to give her piano lessons. Franka no longer feels jealousy and accepts the arrangement, because she does not lose out either. In fact, she has undergone perhaps the biggest transformation, suddenly being open to Jan’s own suggestion that they both might move to his place one day (Ahrens, 2011, p. 296), something which she had radically refused even to consider in the past (Ahrens, 2011, pp. 162-163). Moreover, she rediscovers her love for her sister Lydia and now remembers only the positive moments in their youth, particularly when Lydia sang with her beautiful voice (Ahrens, 2011, p. 297). Although Lydia is dead, new life has developed and hope determines from now on the existence of all three people.
　　In light of this situation, we begin to understand the meaning of the very first passage of this novel, in which Franka noticed the setting-in of rain: the arrival of hundreds and thousands of little beings stepping forward. This rain is the first after a long drought of two months (Ahrens, 2011, p. 9). As much as that rain replenishes parched life, as much Franka is finally drawn back to life through the arrival of Lydia with her daughter Merle. In fact, we might say that before that moment Franka had spun a safe cocoon around herself and felt secure in her isolation, despite her relationship with her boyfriend Jan. As much as the narrator makes us feel rather negatively about Lydia and her hippy lifestyle, we finally realize the major thrust of the novel, in which the foreign and the self must come together in order to free the individual from its self-imposed imprisonment and to return to life, accepting it in all of its chaotic yet also beautiful conditions. By the same token, the foreign, here represented by the failed artist Lydia and her obviously highly talented daughter Merle, needs to return home in order to find its base again without which all world explorations would be a failure.
　　Significantly, this realization also finds its reflection intradiegetically in Franka’s movie script which gains in substance only once she has changed the stark contrast between good and bad into a mutually shared grey, because life can never be so easily divided into just two contrastive categories. This proves to be the decisive reflection of the two sisters in their strongly differing individualities. Once both have realized, though often not fully expressed in words, that they are closely related, after all, and share the same love for Merle, they can actually move forward in the development of their personality. While Franka’s and Lydia’s parents had utterly failed as parents, and hence also as individual characters, and while their daughters almost would have suffered the same destiny, the intersection of the foreign with the self, the merging of the outside world with the inside, and the blending of opposite experiences allows them to bury their mutual hatred and to turn their deep maternal feelings of love toward the young girl, Merle.
　　 Conclusions
　　Altogether, Ahrens has created two most remarkable modern novels predicated on the clashes of foreign worlds, which at first results in bitter tensions, if not even hatred. In the course of the respective narrative development, however, both protagonists, Pia (Zeit der Wahrheit) and Franka (Fremde Schwestern), learn to overcome the personal distance; they abandon their self-isolation and turn more openly to their social environment. Because the symbolic foreign had entered their lives, those are transformed and there is suddenly promise that true love can be found and integrated, each time resulting in a deep sense of hope for the future. The writer powerfully combines political with personal, historical, and fictional accounts to develop literary scenarios of universal value. As we learn so intriguingly, past and present intertwine intimately and do not allow us simply to live today without a sense of history. The pain of the past carries over to the present and challenges the individuals to come to terms with it. Each time love proves to be the decisive catalyst, helping both female characters to leave the shadow of the past behind them and to step forward, and to embrace their male partners and accept life in all of its complexities, contradictions, promises, and disappointments. As Ahrens indicates through her two novels, we exist in a global village, and all attempts to shut out the foreign as the complementary to the self are doomed to fail. In fact, identity develops only fully when the outside is allowed to enter the inside and when both then merge with each other. This also proves to be a great metaphor of the meaning of love itself.
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