“I was only able to write this book now”

Building on the success of her latest novel, The Marshal (The Marschallin), which tells the story of her Slovenian grandmother and her Italian father’s family home in Bari, by Swiss author Zora del BuonoExternal link comes back with Because of him (Because of him), a new autofiction book that continues the family story with the next generation.

The writer looks at the years during which her father, Manfredi del Buono, a young radiologist, settled in Zurich before meeting his mother, a Swiss woman, at the hospital. A young love that will end tragically after a few years.

Zora del Buono was just eight months old when her father, then 33, died in a road accident in the Swiss countryside. The writer’s father and uncle were in a VW Beetle when the driver of an oncoming vehicle hit them head-on while overtaking a milk truck.

The author experienced her father’s absence in a “normal” way, because a person we never knew cannot be missed, she says. But this void nevertheless marked her throughout her life.

In her book, she draws up a merciless list of her “distortions.” Among them is the inability to commit to relationships – for fear that they will suddenly end again.

A taboo all his life

The accident took place in 1963. “But I was only able to write this book now,” she confides when we meet her in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where she lives in a shared room. At his feet is one of his dogs, who are his lifelong companions, in Because of him like in life.

It was only with the dementia of her mother, who now lives in a nursing home in Zurich, that Zora del Buono was able to find the inner freedom to take an interest in her father. The latter’s tragic death was a taboo between mother and daughter throughout her life.

“I thought I had to protect her. Today, I regret that we did not discuss it,” she says. The book is also a tribute to this strong woman who managed her life as a working single mother in Zurich with great dignity and who never remarried.

While liquidating her mother’s apartment when she moves, Zora del Buono finds a newspaper article about the accident trial that propels her into the past.

Found guilty in 1963, the “killer”, whose initials are ET, got away with a minimum sentence. The author’s curiosity is piqued: who was the man who, through a risky overtaking maneuver, destroyed a small family? How did he live with his guilt? “I told myself that maybe he was still alive, that I had to hurry,” she says.

Closer to the truth

To carry out her research, Zora del Buono returns to her native Switzerland, a country that she had fled in her youth to settle in Amsterdam, then in Berlin. It was there that she first worked as an architect, in the period following the fall of the Wall, before founding the famous magazine with a Swiss friend mare.

For her extensive reporting, Zora del Buono has traveled around the world, making a name for herself in journalism. Being tenacious, curious, keeping your eyes, ears and heart open: these are all qualities that have characterized her for decades. In this sense, Because of him wasn’t difficult for her. “The book was not complicated. It suits me so much,” she says.

The result is an artistically arranged mosaic of research, thoughts, facts, and accounts of conversations shared with friends over coffee. “They really happened,” she assures us.

With his circle of friends, discussions touch on themes such as guilt, memories and connections. These parentheses, both entertaining and informative, like the digressions on accident statistics, serve to place one’s own destiny in a broader context.

Zora del Buono now commutes between Germany and Zurich.

Stefan Bohrer

What happened to his family continues to happen every day. It is important for her to emphasize this: fatal car accidents traumatize entire families. “Behind every case there are many stories.”

Some locations, regions and names have been changed and rearranged. “But as much as possible, it’s truthful,” she says. Like the scene where she finds two Super 8 format films at her mother’s house. We see his parents when they were a newly-loving couple, during a visit to the zoo: laughing, lively, full of life.

“That alone made it worth the research. They were simply a young and cool couple. Her mother suddenly appears so different: bold, happy and funny. “I only knew her as a sad widow,” regrets the writer. She understands what was taken from her mother.

Zora del Buono was blessed with new memories during her research. Among them, those acquired thanks to the 85-year-old nurse who took care of his father in the days before his death.

The old woman still remembered a surprising number of details. Manfredi del Buono died in the hospital where he worked as a radiologist. Everyone loved this lively doctor and were deeply shocked.

“She said the whole hospital cried at the time.” A former doctor colleague, now very elderly, told the writer funny stories about her father, “a young Italian in Zurich”. The many empty spaces around his father were filled with new stories and images. Zora del Buono is grateful.

The “killer” becomes human

The writer was also able to get an idea of ​​the author of the accident, Eduard Traxler. She became more conciliatory. It was thanks to a collaborator of the archives, who provided her with the trial files, that she found information on the course of the accident and the biography of the man.

The latter has since died. But conversations with her acquaintances depict a completely endearing man, for whom she can even feel compassion. He suffered his entire life from the accident, never drove a car again, lived quite alone and was probably homosexual.

Because of him is therefore also a testimony of compassion and forgiveness. “I really regret that we didn’t talk. It would have been good for him,” says Zora del Buono.

The author not only delves into her family’s history, she also has numerous encounters with strangers in her former homeland. If the sight of a mountain panorama and magnificently decorated cows during a desalp moves him, the encounters with reluctant locals also make him rediscover a feeling of confinement. The same one she fled decades ago.

It is therefore a struggle with the social culture of Switzerland, to which it is getting closer again. After decades spent in Germany and reporting for mare around the world, Zora del Buono now commutes between Germany and Zurich.

Since last year, she has had an apartment there again and is enjoying a calmer daily life. “In Zurich, everything is so close,” she says. In the evening, after the theater, she returns home in five tram stops. She always meets familiar faces there.

And yet, the author continues to appreciate the fractures of Berlin, the wild nature of the city which grows without restraint, notably for lack of money. “I’m comfortable in both worlds,” she says, even though most of her friends in Zurich are German.

Zora del Buono is already planning another family novel. It will focus on her aunt and the lives of young single women in Zurich in the 60s and 70s. The writer had already started her research when her father’s story imposed itself on her. “I should probably pause the research on my family,” she says with a laugh.

She would then take the opportunity to travel the Scottish coast; There, meet locals and discuss the changes that have occurred after Brexit. But maybe something completely different will come along. “I’m not short of ideas,” she concludes.

Text translated from German by Dorian Burkhalter