Daddy

“We called him Daddy. That’s what he wanted. He thought it sounded modern.”

Monika Helfer continues the tale she began in The Riff-Raff – the one of her family. Daddy is a memoir that also pens a portrait of a post-war generation. It is a novel about growing up in difficult circumstances and the author’s search for her roots.

He had a prosthetic leg, was often absent, was a widower, a pensioner and loved literature. Monika Helfer’s book orbits her father’s life and tells the story of her childhood and adolescence – the spaciousness and library in the mountain recovery home for war victims and the poverty and the cramped conditions in a South Tyrolean settlement with many children in one kitchen. She writes what she knows about her father, a man who, like many of his generation, didn’t say much.
With great veracity, the result is a novel that gently unfolds existential matters and traces painful memories. “Yes, everything turned out fine. In a terrible way, it all turned out fine.”


“Remembering is painful, but sometimes also joyful – as a quiet longing for a lost paradise, to which her father also belonged. Here lies the craft of her writing, which never takes the tone of an accusation; on the contrary...” – Rose-Maria Gropp, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“Daddy is a brittle, almost dismissive title for 172 pages of tenderness and love. Austrian writer Monika Helfer’s new book reads like a sequel to her latest bestseller, The Riff-Raff – and yet it stands alone like a monolithic rock in Helfer’s homeland of Vorarlberg, in all its beauty and laconic tone.” – Cathrin Kahlweit, Süddeutsche Zeitung

“The fragmentary aspect of this book is captivating and excites the imagination, Helfer’s tone is unsentimental, eschewing complaint or accusation – in short, it is enchanting. No bitterness is concealed, nothing is glossed over, and nothing is unduly embellished or analysed to death either. The whole book reads effortlessly, and is a rare, heart-warming accomplishment." – Gisela Trahms, Die Welt

“Oh, you could rave about this book for the length of a whole book. So much warmth, honesty and gravity is rare. “ – Peer Teuwsen, NZZ Bücher am Sonntag

“Monika Helfer leaps through in time, approaching her father from all possible directions, without frantically trying to fill the gaps in her story.” – Christoph Schröder, ZEIT online

“From fragments and found objects in the darkroom of the past, the author has recreated the traces of her memories, the intensity of which is enhanced by her simple, highly precise narrative style.” – Kleine Zeitung

“Once again, at a high level, Monika Helfer’s strengths are on display here – the ones that made The Riff-Raff a pleasure to read: her precise observation, her sense for defining moments, and her passion for finding the right words.” – Torben Rosenbohm, Nord-West Zeitung

“What a book!” – Beate Tröger, Der Freitag