Drawing on novelists from Europe and elsewhere, the volume analyzes the literary response to seven dominant concerns (ideas of Europe, conflict, borders, empire, unification, migration, and marginalization), offering a ground-breaking study of how modern and contemporary writers have participated in the European debate.

Introduction, Andrew Hammond.- 1   Traumatic Europe: The Impossibility of Mourning in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, Theodore Koulouris.- 2   Ágota Kristóf’s Europe: (Un)Connectedness and (Non)Belonging in The Third Lie, Metka Zupančič.- 3   Between Yearning and Aversion: Visions of Europe in Hilde Spiel’s The Darkened Room, Christoph Parry.- 4   The European Origins of Albania in Ismail Kadare’s The File on H, Peter Morgan.- 5   Images of Conquest: Europe and Latin American Identity, Peter Beardsell.- 6   Sissie’s Odyssey: Literary Exorcism in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy, Esther Pujolràs-Noguer.- 7   European Fiction on the Borders: The Case of Herta Müller, Marcel Cornis-Pope and Andrew Hammond.- 8   Borders, Borderlands and Romani Identity in Colum McCann’s Zoli, Mihaela Moscaliuc.- 9   A Betrayal of Enlightenment: EU Expansion and Tõnu Õnnepalu’s Border State, Gordana P. Crnković.- 10  The Dilemmas of ‘Post-Communism’: Elizabeth Wilson’s The Lost Time Café, Andrew Hammond.- 11  Minorities and Migrants: Transforming the Swedish Literary Field, Anne Heith.- 12  ‘My Dream Can Also Become Your Burden’: Semezdin Mehmedinović’s Poetics of Self-Determination, Guido Snel.- 13  Blowing Hot and Cold: Georgia and the West, Donald Rayfield.- 14  Becoming Black in Belgium: Chika Unigwe and the Social Construction of Blackness, Sarah de Mul.- 15  Undivided Waters: Spatial and Translational Paradoxes in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s The Bridge of the Golden Horn, Gizem Arslan.- 16  Amara Lakhous’s Divorce Islamic Style: Muslim Connections in European Culture, Daniele Comberiati.- Bibliography.- Index

This book examines the ways in which fiction has addressed the continent since the Second World War. Drawing on novelists from Europe and elsewhere, the volume analyzes the literary response to seven dominant concerns (ideas of Europe, conflict, borders, empire, unification, migration, and marginalization), offering a ground-breaking study of how modern and contemporary writers have participated in the European debate. The sixteen essays view the chosen writers, not as representatives of national literatures, but as participants in transcontinental discussion that has occurred across borders, cultures, and languages. In doing so, the contributors raise questions about the forms of power operating across and radiating from Europe, challenging both the institutionalized divisions of the Cold War and the triumphalist narrative of continental unity currently being written in Brussels.

“An eminently timely and fascinating collection of essays, tightly focused on Europe at a time of maximum anxiety about the region. Combining regional and larger geopolitical questions about Europe and European integration, the choice of texts foregrounds marginal and neglected ethnicities and regions, enabling a forceful testing of the European project. This will be a book that most researchers of the cultural side to European integration (an emerging and very important field), as well as scholars of modern languages, comparative literature, and the contemporary novel, will want on their shelves.” (Adam Piette, Professor of Modern Literature, University of Sheffield, UK)

Brings together a diverse range of scholars from around the globe Offers a holistic and comprehensive approach to a breadth of issues impacting Europe since 1945 Bridges literary analysis with cutting-edge discussions of Europe taking place in Politics, Economics, History, and the Social Sciences.