Beatrice Sandberg

• This article deals with a selection of contemporary texts by Swiss authors that address the theme of the family in various ways. The question put forward is whether such literary representations still represent today’s families or whether they miss the mark. The variety of literary forms and the spectrum of perspectives in this selection proved far more diverse than expected. Nevertheless, auto-fictional narration is still fundamental, whereby retrospectives of a life lived are conveyed from within the narrator’s own family circle. The discourse of memory continues to dominate substantial parts of the narrative, and a preoccupation with father-son and mother-daughter relations within family constellations still remains relevant. However, humour and irony are also important as a means of creating distance at moments where reality verges on the absurd and the narrator’s own family is shown in a comic light, or where the terrain is delicate, as for example when the action takes place in a nursing home.