Im Meer waren wir nie

Lili moves into a retirement home to support her husband, who is in need of care. Her family is looking for someone who visits her regularly and helps her in everyday life. The first-person narrator says: "I am this someone."
She lives in the same house with Lili's granddaughter Sophie, and together they are raising their eight-year-old son Eric. But she has found a job in a distant city and is now hesitant to confess to the two that she will soon move away.
She takes care of the clever, know-it-all Eric and the ever-complaining Lili. She has fleeting conversations with a waiter who, like her, comes from elsewhere. At the same time, she finds it difficult to get used to the fact that her sister, who is ten years younger, is no longer a child. She wrestles with the fading friendship with Sophie and with the dreariness of the old people's home between temesta and card games. When Lili finally dies, the young women dare to make a new start.
With a realistic view and poetic language, Meral Kureyshi illuminates the lives of women over several generations and unfolds a panopticon of the family in today's world.

Meral Kureyshi, born in Prizren in 1983, came to Switzerland with her family in 1992 and lives in Bern. She studied literature and German language and literature and works as a freelance author. Her first novel "Elephants in the Garden" was nominated for the Swiss Book Prize, won several awards and has been translated into many languages. Her second novel "Five Seasons" was awarded the manuscript prize "The Second Book" of the Marianne and Curt Dienemann Foundation. In 2020 she was invited to the Days of German-Language Literature in Klagenfurt (Bachmann Prize). For "We were never in the sea", she received a literature prize from the canton of Bern in 2025.