Rage and Sorrow of the Bleeding Tree: Queering the Text as Body in Kim de l'Horizon's Blutbuch
An evening of readings by Souvik Biswas and Priyanka Kali
Kim de l'horizon's novel Blutbuch (Bloodbook) follows the semi autobiographical pattern of documenting the present and the pastness of Kim's life in a retrospective manner of capturing the lives of their mother and grandmother. The huge beech tree (die Buche) in the grandmother's garden is the central foreboding character that casts the shadows over the generations in the family. Kim explores the beautiful and ugly realities of growing up as a non binary person and their relationship with family. The queering space of love, friendship, sex, traumas, disappointments, loneliness, choices, desires, chosen bodies and performances are all extensively covered not only in the story of Kim, but also demonstrates through their super narrative structure of the book. This qualitative dissociation of the conventional oeuvre characterises the revolution that Blutbuch artfully and psychologically prepares for its readers.