Full-text resources of CEJSH and other databases are now available in the new Library of Science.
Visit https://bibliotekanauki.pl

Results found: 1

first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last

Search results

help Sort By:

help Limit search:
first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last
1
Publication available in full text mode
Content available

Who Was He? Internment, Exile and Ambiguity in Norbert Gstrein’s Novel Die englischen Jahre (The English Years) (1999)

100%
Löschnigg M.
Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
|
2021
|
issue 30(3)
47-63
EN
Winner of the Alfred Döblin Preis in 1999, the novel Die englischen Jahre by the Austrian novelist Norbert Gstrein deals with internment and exile in Britain dur- ing and after the Second World War. It centres on the (fictitious) character of Gabriel Hirschfelder, a writer and refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria who is detained, with oth- er ‘enemy aliens,’ in a camp on the Isle of Man. There, Nazi sympathisers are interned together with Jewish and political refugees, and the central chapters in the novel depict the conditions and resulting conflicts in the internment camp. Hirschfelder dies in exile at Southend-on-Sea, having confessed shortly before his death that he killed a fellow inmate. This confession as well as reports of a transport of internees sunk off the coast of Scotland in 1940 incite a young Austrian woman to try to solve the mystery surrounding Hirschfelder and his allegedly lost autobiography The English Years. The paper discusses how Gstrein combines different genres like the historical novel/historiographic metafic- tion and the whodunit as well as using multiple narrative perspectives and refractions to pinpoint questions of shifting identities and allegiances, and of belonging and alienation in the wake of internment and exile.
first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.