Story »without Warranty«

The German Crocodile by Ijoma Mangold

Abstract

Analysis of the novel The German Crocodile by Ijoma Mangold (2017). The author shows how objects - in this case an ebony-colored crocodile that sits enthroned in the parents' living room and refers to the father's Nigerian origins as well as to the colonial appropriation of art objects - become symbols and signifiers that take on an incommensurable life of their own in the psyche of the first-person narrator.