Overview

Explores how contemporary novels dealing with flight and expulsion after the Second World War unsettle traditional notions of Heimat without abandoning place-based notions of belonging. At the end of the Second World War, millions of Germans and Poles fled or were expelled from the border regions of what had been their countries. This monograph examines how, in Cold War and post-Cold War Europe since the 1970s, writers have responded to memories or postmemories of this traumatic displacement. Friederike Eigler engages with important currents in scholarship -- on ""Heimat,"" the much-debated German concept of ""homeland""; on the spatial turnin literary studies; and on German-Polish relations -- arguing for a transnational approach to the legacies of flight and expulsion and for a spatial approach to Heimat. She explores notions of belonging in selected postwar and contemporary German novels, with a comparative look at a Polish novel, Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night (1998). Eigler finds dynamic manifestations of place in Tokarczuk's novel, in Horst Bienek's 1972-82 Gleiwitz tetralogy about the historical border region of Upper Silesia, and in contemporary novels by Reinhard Jirgl, Christoph Hein, Kathrin Schmidt, Tanja Duckers, Olaf Muller, and Sabrina Janesch. In a decisive departure from earlierapproaches, Eigler explores how these novels foster an awareness of the regions' multiethnic and multinational histories, unsettling traditional notions of Heimat without altogether abandoning place-based notions of belonging. Friederike Eigler is Professor of German at Georgetown University.

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9781571139030

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This elegant book provides useful historical and political background to help the literary scholar find a path to understanding. . . . Highly recommended. CHOICE

Eigler's book is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the complex histories of German ?ight from Eastern Europe as rendered in contemporary literature. The author's detailed and nuanced interpretations, and especially the comparative perspective . . . provide much fodder for thought. They gesture toward a comparative, transnational approach to reading literature that can serve as an example for other scholars of German Studies in a broader European framework. MONATSHEFTE Against the background of a continent's transition that continues to hang in the balance, Eigler's transitional study . . . does well to draw our attention to European literature's contributions to imagining place and belonging anew. SYMPOSIUM This elegant book provides useful historical and political background to help the literary scholar find a path to understanding. . . . Highly recommended. CHOICE Question(s) assumptions . . . and present(s) a much more nuanced picture. . . . (T)horoughly recommended. And, true to the standards set by Camden House as perhaps the leading publ(T)horoughly recommended. And, true to the standards set by Camden House as perhaps the leading publisher of innovative scholarship on modern Germa

This elegant book provides useful historical and political background to help the literary scholar find a path to understanding. . . . Highly recommended. CHOICE Question(s) assumptions . . . and present(s) a much more nuanced picture. . . . (T)horoughly recommended. And, true to the standards set by Camden House as perhaps the leading publisher of innovative scholarship on modern German culture, (the book) is beautifully produced. JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES (Joachim Whaley)

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