New Germans, New Dutch »

Liesbeth Minnaard is assistant professor in literary studies at Leiden University.

In today’s globalized world, traditions of a national Self and a national Other no longer hold. This timely volume considers the stakes in our changing definitions of national boundaries in light of the unmistakable transformation of German and Dutch societies. Examining how the literature of migration intervenes in public discourses on multiculturality and including detailed analysis of works by the Turkish-German writers Emine Sevgi Özdamer and Feridun Zaimoglu and the Moroccan-Dutch writers Abdelkader Benali and Hafid Bouazza, New Germans, New Dutch offers crucial insights into the ways in which literature negotiates both difference and the national context of its writing.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter I: National Identity

The Discursive Production of Germanness and Dutchness

Chapter II: Literature of Migration

Aesthetic Interventions in Times of Transformation

Chapter III: Emine Sevgi Özdamar

‘I Didn’t Know That Your Passport Is Also Your Diary’

Chapter IV: Hafid Bouazza

‘Long Live Uprooting! Long Live the Imagination!’

Chapter V: Feridun Zaimoglu

‘Here Only the Kanake Has the Say’

Chapter VI: Abdelkader Benali

‘When the World Goes Mad and Everybody Has Lost Their Words’

Conclusion

Literary Negotiations of Germanness and Dutchness

Notes

Works Cited

Index