Nightmare of the Embryos

Nightmare of the Embryos is a stunning collection of short fictional works by the Swiss writer Mariella Mehr (1947–2022), one of the most groundbreaking German writers of her time and simultaneously one of the most neglected. Mehr, a Yenish author, was subjected to the Swiss government-funded assimilationist campaign targeting nomadic or “Gypsy” populations. Her experiences drove her to use her writing to explore systems of violence, power, and abuse. Over the course of her career, she drew from a dark interior space, inventing new ways to depict pain and write the body. These magnificent, short pieces are drawn from published and unpublished works (many have never even appeared in German) and reveal Mehr as a master stylist. The title story surreally traces Mehr’s emergence into adulthood after growing up in Swiss orphanages (“I woke up on a mountain of rubble that should have been called childhood”); another, “Island Body,” is a love story gone sour, narrated on a beach island by sea grass and sand dunes; “Did You Hear” describes the writer, who, with her questioning, longing, and fear, visits St. Lawrence’s chapel in the Rhine valley where “for someone like me, brought up Catholic, mortal sin has remained the secret par excellence.” As if in a psychic panopticon, these pieces open up swift stunning views into the Yenish community, nighttime bars, imagined landscapes and dreams, and the Holocaust. Translated brilliantly and with an introduction by Caroline Froh, Nightmare of the Embryos is a rich, imagistic, and linguistically inventive collection of works, by an author who has been described as the “Joan of Arc of the Yenish people.”