History of Nowhere

by Richard Robinson

Narratives of the European Border: A History of Nowhere is an extended study of shifting European borders in twentieth-century literature. A work of literary geography, the book negotiates theories of place and space before studying texts - by Italo Svevo, Joseph Roth, Rebecca West, James Joyce and Kazuo Ishiguro - drawn from a variety of national canons. Comparing how interstitial spaces have been transmuted into fictional settings, Richard Robinson argues that 'Nowhere' is a political territory which has assumed an aesthetic form. In Central and Eastern Europe, where empire and nation have frequently been in conflict, the border condition is not anomalous but commonplace: Narratives of the European Border is in part an investigation into the practices of colonial occupation and national self-determination. Although it mainly concentrates on the radical border transformations of the interwar period, the book also considers more recent responses to the Cold War map.