Vulnerability, Relationality, Fragmentation and Networking in Linda Grant’s A Stranger City (2019)

Abstract

Abstract Set during the immediate months before and after Brexit, Linda Grant’s novel A Stranger City turns London into a microcosm where the misfortunes linked to migration, racism, violence, terrorism, capitalism and individualism make a group of dissimilar characters’ lives intersect around the mysterious death of an ‘unidentified’ migrant woman. Grant’s literary works tend to represent female characters’ journeys in search of personhood. However, this time, she addresses more transnational and present-day issues to the extent that it has been considered as illustrative of hybrid literature produced during the post-2016 era. By relying on close-reading tools, one of the main aims of my study is to demonstrate that A Stranger City displays some specific narrative devices which feature those fictional modes that have been defined as translit (Legget 2016), networked novels (Edwards 2019) and fragmented narratives (Gioia 2013). Further, I will claim that women writers like Grant are resorting to new narrative forms to denounce the fact that the global crisis of values affects women more intensely. Moreover, I will link the notions of home and exile problematized in this novel to the modern construction of Jewish identity and, finally, conclude that this relational narrative proves that twenty-first-century Jewish women are embracing the transnational arena to redefine themselves in our global world.