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Generator: Roman
2017 wird der Reaktorblock Kori 1, der älteste Südkoreas, nach vierzigjähriger Laufzeit abgeschaltet. Auch die Autorin hat zu diesem Zeitpunkt ihr vierzigstes Altersjahr erreicht. Ihre Mutter arbeitete einst dort, ihr Vater gehörte als britischer Ingenieur zum Expertenteam der Kraftwerkserbauer. Eine Ära der lange bewunderten und mit vielen Hoffnungen verbundenen Atomtechnologie geht zu Anlass für die Autorin, über ihre Identität nachzuforschen. Eine abenteuerliche und ungewisse Suche nach ihrer familiären Herkunft beginnt. Sie spürt Konturen des ungewöhnlichen Lebens des unbekannten Vaters auf.
Aus den Bruchstücken der väterlichen Biographie, auf ihrer eindrücklichen Reise zu den Orten in Großbritannien, Asien und den USA, an denen er gelebt hat, entwickelt sich ein faszinierendes emotionales Spiel der Erinnerung zwischen Phantasie und Realität.
Aus den Bruchstücken der väterlichen Biographie, auf ihrer eindrücklichen Reise zu den Orten in Großbritannien, Asien und den USA, an denen er gelebt hat, entwickelt sich ein faszinierendes emotionales Spiel der Erinnerung zwischen Phantasie und Realität.
159 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 27, 2025
28 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 9, 2026
Generator is a restrained, intelligent work of autofiction that transforms nuclear power plants into unlikely emotional landmarks sites where personal history, geopolitical ambition, and inherited silence intersect.
Rinny Gremaud begins with an arresting fact: she was born in 1977 in a nuclear power plant in South Korea. When the reactor that framed her entry into the world is decommissioned decades later, the closure triggers a reckoning not only with the end of the nuclear utopia, but with the absence of her biological father, a British engineer who never acknowledged her existence.
Rather than offering a conventional search for the father narrative, Gremaud constructs something more oblique and quietly radical. The father remains largely unreachable, defined by silence and distance. In his place, the narrator follows his professional trail: power stations in Wales, Taiwan, South Korea, and the American Midwest. The result is a pilgrimage not toward a man, but toward systems machines built to promise control, progress, and permanence, all of which ultimately prove fragile.
What gives Generator its power is tone. Gremaud writes with precision, irony, and remarkable emotional restraint. The prose resists sentimentality, allowing gaps, unanswered letters, and imagined biographies to carry as much weight as documented fact. In inventing a life for the father who never claimed her, she exposes the strange intimacy of speculation and the freedom it can bring.
The book’s brilliance lies in its metaphorical layering. Nuclear plants become stand-ins for paternal absence: immense, carefully engineered, and dangerous when misunderstood. Gremaud’s investigation is as much about energy emotional, political, historical as it is about lineage.
Generator is a subtle, haunting meditation on origins, inheritance, and the stories we build when truth withholds itself. It will resonate with readers drawn to literary nonfiction that values nuance over revelation and silence over spectacle.
Rinny Gremaud begins with an arresting fact: she was born in 1977 in a nuclear power plant in South Korea. When the reactor that framed her entry into the world is decommissioned decades later, the closure triggers a reckoning not only with the end of the nuclear utopia, but with the absence of her biological father, a British engineer who never acknowledged her existence.
Rather than offering a conventional search for the father narrative, Gremaud constructs something more oblique and quietly radical. The father remains largely unreachable, defined by silence and distance. In his place, the narrator follows his professional trail: power stations in Wales, Taiwan, South Korea, and the American Midwest. The result is a pilgrimage not toward a man, but toward systems machines built to promise control, progress, and permanence, all of which ultimately prove fragile.
What gives Generator its power is tone. Gremaud writes with precision, irony, and remarkable emotional restraint. The prose resists sentimentality, allowing gaps, unanswered letters, and imagined biographies to carry as much weight as documented fact. In inventing a life for the father who never claimed her, she exposes the strange intimacy of speculation and the freedom it can bring.
The book’s brilliance lies in its metaphorical layering. Nuclear plants become stand-ins for paternal absence: immense, carefully engineered, and dangerous when misunderstood. Gremaud’s investigation is as much about energy emotional, political, historical as it is about lineage.
Generator is a subtle, haunting meditation on origins, inheritance, and the stories we build when truth withholds itself. It will resonate with readers drawn to literary nonfiction that values nuance over revelation and silence over spectacle.
January 8, 2026
Generator is a quietly arresting debut that fuses personal reckoning with global history, transforming nuclear power from an abstract system into something deeply human. Rinny Gremaud’s spare, precise prose carries the reader across continents and abandoned nuclear sites, each location resonating with emotional residue as much as technological legacy. The novel’s strength lies in its restraint: the narrator’s search for her estranged father unfolds through atmosphere, memory, and place rather than overt exposition, allowing absence itself to become a central presence.
What makes Generator especially compelling is its ability to hold multiple scales at once. Gremaud deftly intertwines the post World War II rise of nuclear energy with an intimate exploration of identity, inheritance, and belonging. The dormant facilities the narrator visits mirror the emotional silences she confronts, creating a powerful metaphorical symmetry. The result is a lyrical, reflective work that lingers one that will resonate with readers interested in literary fiction, science and society, and stories where history quietly shapes the present.
What makes Generator especially compelling is its ability to hold multiple scales at once. Gremaud deftly intertwines the post World War II rise of nuclear energy with an intimate exploration of identity, inheritance, and belonging. The dormant facilities the narrator visits mirror the emotional silences she confronts, creating a powerful metaphorical symmetry. The result is a lyrical, reflective work that lingers one that will resonate with readers interested in literary fiction, science and society, and stories where history quietly shapes the present.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews