A World in the Shadows
Eastern European Readings, 1989–2025
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Since 1989, the countries of the former Eastern Bloc have experienced an unprecedented literary awakening. The West discovered a multi-voiced literary continent that had previously lain in the dark corners of public attention. The perception of important, present-day literary voices was accompanied by the belated reception of a number of European writers who are now part of world literature: the radical nature of the artistic means employed by authors such as Imre Kertész and Varlam Shalamov created a new idea of literary testimony. Belatedly, the literature of Ukraine also came into focus, and with it, a giant unknown country between Europe, which had expanded to the east, and Russia. Marked by the region’s history of violence, on the one hand, and full of enthusiasm for experimentation, on the other, literature from Eastern Europe gave expression to stories undescribed and untold: the geo-poetic landscape prose and the family novel resonated strongly with German-speaking audiences. Today, some 30 years after the opening, the pendulum is swinging back. Belarus and Ukraine are in danger of sinking back into the grey zone from which they emerged – a “final frontier” excluded from the European peace project. In times of exile and virtual spaces, literature is detaching itself from its geographic location. Eastern European literature is no longer necessarily written in Eastern Europe or in one of its languages. What remains, however, is the pattern of crisis as a condition for visibility – and the role of writers as victims and witnesses of war and dictatorship
(Osteuropa 1-3/2025, pp. 229–262)