Alles Balkan? Divergierende Entwürfe des Kulturraums ›Jugoslawien‹ in ausgewählten Romanen der aktuellen deutschsprachigen Migrationsliteratur

Abstract

In this paper I aim to analyse the many dimensions of literary depictions of Yugoslavia in recent German prose fiction, focusing on three novels which all describe migrations between various Yugoslavian countries and the German-speaking world. My particular focus lies in the ways in which aspects of perceived own or foreign identity correlate with descriptions of familiar and unfamiliar (social) spaces. This leads to an analysis of how the novels in ques tion define culture as well as cultural identity – both challenging concepts, especially under the precondition of conflicting collective identities like those that came to be highlighted in the Yugoslav Wars.