Gomringer writes about her multifaceted mother, her wisdom and sense of humor, her husband, the incident with the guinea pigs, and herself.
Her mother leaves the author her friends, her library, and her unease. Nora Gomringer writes about her as a daughter who misses her, as an angry woman, as a silenced poet, and wonders how little her mother can be conjured up, even when she, as a daughter, wants to. Her mother has—now in heaven—finally emancipated herself.

“A Child Practices Death on a Guinea Pig” is a brutally honest yet poetically fragmented book about saying goodbye to one’s own mother, about memory, and about the question of how grief can be transformed into language. It tells the story of a multifaceted, courageous, art-loving, and unconventional mother, and a daughter who traces her through writing—feeling her way, doubting, and full of contradictions.

Nora Gomringer, born in 1980, is Swiss and German. She is a poet and filmmaker, and writes and narrates for radio, television, and literary supplements. In 2015, she received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize; in 2022, the Else Lasker-Schüler Prize; and most recently, in 2025, she was awarded the Kassel Literature Prize for Grotesque Humor. Nora Gomringer lives in Bamberg, where she serves as director of the Villa Concordia International Artists’ Residence.