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Transgenerational Trauma, Shared Vulnerability and Interconnectedness in Zina Rohan’s The Small Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2020

Silvia Pellicer-Ortín
Silvia Pellicer-Ortín*
Affiliation:
Dpto. Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Facultad de Educación, Universidad de Zaragoza, C/ Pedro Cerbuna, 12. 50009 Zaragoza, Spain. Email: spellice@unizar.es
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Abstract

This article aims at showing that extreme situations, such as wars, can reveal a common human vulnerability, which thus leads to a lack of sovereignty affecting all the agents implied in the traumatic episode. In Zina Rohan’s 2010 novel, The Small Book, this shared vulnerability crosses time and space boundaries by connecting coetaneous characters and their subsequent generations through inherited traumatic memories. These connections lead Rohan to blur the boundaries between what we may understand as victims and perpetrators of trauma. Thus, drawing on significant theories within the fields of trauma and memory studies as well as on conceptions about human vulnerability and interconnectedness, the main aim of this study is to analyse the key narrative mechanisms used by this British–Jewish author in order to represent the shared vulnerability and exposure to trauma that reigns during war and post-war times.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 29 , Issue 3: Literature in Times of Crisis and Vulnerability , June 2021 , pp. 333 - 353
Copyright
© 2020 Academia Europaea

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