Identitti
- date of publication: 15.02.2021
- 432 Pages
- Hanser Verlag
- hardcover
- ISBN 978-3-446-26921-7
- Deutschland: 22,00 €
- Österreich: 22,70 €
- ePUB-Format
- E-Book ISBN 978-3-446-26999-6
- E-Book Deutschland: 12,99 €
It’s the 2020s and things are complicated. Then there’s a scandal: Prof. Saraswati is a white woman – and nothing could be worse. Because she holds the chair of Postcolonial Studies in Düsseldorf and is the supreme goddess of identity debates, in which she describes herself as a person of colour. Never before has a story of the present day been so fast-paced and told with such ease.
Nivedita is flipping out. Born in Germany to an Indian father, she strongly identifies with her professor – but what is identity after all? As if Sally Rooney, Beyoncé and Frantz Fanon got together and watched Sex Education, the hunt for “real” belonging begins. While Saraswati receives online threats and demonstrators demand her resignation, Nivedita asks her some probing questions: Is our identity just our personality, or is it more defined by our gender or skin colour? Is it possible to get rid of whiteness? What’s sex got to do with it? Mithu Sanyal’s writing is filled with wonderful self-deprecating humour and liberating insights. No one leaves the centrifugal force of this novel in the same way they started.
“You start to wish that debates on cultural identity in the arts sections of newspapers were conducted with the same passion and self-deprecation as in Identitti.” – Andreas Busch, Tagesspiegel
“Identity is as multi-faceted as Kali herself: a cross between a coming-of-age and campus novel in which a montage of theories turns into a fairy tale, and the upbeat, entertaining and even thrilling plot drives towards an ultimately conciliatory end. This novel is a perfect expression of the cultural wars taking place in our present times of digital escalation.” – Ronald Düker, Die Zeit
“On every page, you laugh out loud at least three times. Because Sanyal has an unprecedented talent for showing both the freedoms of radical thinking and the limits of discourse. With Identitti Mithu Sanyal has written one of the most original books of this spring.” – Katharina Teusch, FAZ
“Identitti – even the title is a firecracker. And Mithu Sanyal’s novel is a firecracker too, both daring and witty in equal measure. In it, the writer, who has a PhD in cultural studies, puts one of the most essential debates of our time into overdrive: the complex landscape in the wide field of identity politics.” – Claudia Kramatschek, Deutschlandfunk Lesart
“Mithu Sanyal’s novel Identitti is as refreshing as a sip of glacial water. The German author finds plenty of good words to deal with the subject of identity. Fortunately, she doesn’t only use the correct ones.” – Jörg Scheller, NZZ
“Identitti is outlandish, funny, challenging. A clever, scintillating contribution to a debate about identity and racism, as necessary as it is important, elsewhere often embittered, but conducted here in a refreshingly unblinkered fashion.” – Katja Weise, NDR Kultur
“Identitti is none other than a novel for all those who are constantly asked where they come from – and for which they have had to wait too long.” – Thomas Hummitzsch, Rolling Stone
“Be sure to read it. Really be sure to read it. And if you don’t read anything else this year, read this book!” – Gert Scobel, 3sat Buchzeit

Foreign Sales
Arabic (Al-Kamel), English World (Astra House), Denmark (Straarup&Co), Italy (Keller Editore), Netherlands (Uitgeverij Cossee), Serbia (Kontrast) Spain (Consonni)