Fremdheitskonstruktionen in Karin Gündischs Roman COSMIN. Von einem, der auszog, das Leben zu lernen

Abstract Cosmin, a twelve-year-old Roma boy from Transylvania, only goes to school for a short while. For his mother, it is more important, that he, the only male of a household with many mouths to feed, help her with work. But Cosmin’s teacher does not give up and proposes a bargain: If Cosmin’s mother lets her children go to school, she will get electricity from the school to be able to watch TV. Due to this arrangement, Cosmin returns to school for a few days, becomes a little thief and embarks on a journey that can become an opportunity for him. A kind of a bildungsroman, a coming of age novel focused on the ups and downs between two worlds on Romanian soil, that could not be more different from one another: the Romanian majority and the Roma minority. This article sets out to document life at the brink of society, with all of its facets.