About the work
“Ein schönes Ausländerkind” (roughly “A Beautiful Foreign Child”) is the autofictional debut novel by the Austrian writer, cabaret artist and social media satirist Toxische Pommes, published in 2024 by Zsolnay in Vienna. The stage version of the novel is set to premiere on 19 March 2027 in the Kasino of the Vienna Burgtheater, directed by Sara Ostertag.
Plot
In the 1990s a family flees the war breaking out in Yugoslavia and comes to Austria, first to Wiener Neustadt. The unnamed narrator does everything she can to become the perfect migrant and drifts away from her parents in the process. Her father, by contrast, never receives a work permit because of a quota for foreigners, hardly learns German and withdraws more and more, until his daughter begins to feel ashamed of him.
Cultural significance
The novel was widely reviewed as a funny and at the same time sad account of integration and its emotional cost, and above all as a portrait of the relationship between father and daughter. The author has said she wanted to write about non-integration through a father figure who does not meet the expected standards. Literary scholars have since begun to read the book as an example of post-migrant literature.