Post-National Worlds in Contemporary European Literature

Using works by Hafid Bouazza, Najat El Hachmi, Tsjêbbe Hettinga, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Leïla Slimani, Zadie Smith, and Kjell Westö, this book looks at post-national feelings of belonging in contemporary European literature.

In their literary work and authorship, these authors turn to imagine larger worlds, within and beyond Europe, to escape the confinements of the national and to imagine communities created through connections and solidarities they choose to sustain.

This book analyses issues of voice, representation, history, memory, home, and cross-cultural solidarity in these authors’ novels, stories, and poetry, finding attempts to shape literary worlds that escape the trappings of Europe’s history and sustain into an uncertain future. In its innovative combination of perspectives from world literature, minority studies, and European studies, and reading across seven languages and cultures, this book shows the many worlds of European literature. Through exploring how these writers negotiate identity, borders, and culture in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, this book makes visible a Europe in which identities can once again be defined outside the borders of the national.