Memory, Compromised and Implicated Identities, and Narrative Ethics in Rachel Seiffert’s Novels

Abstract

ABSTRACT Though thematically diverse, the novels by German-British writer Rachel Seiffert share an interest in exploring the various ways in which ordinary people become entangled with structures of violence. Ranging from children to elderly people, the characters in The Dark Room (2001) and A Boy in Winter (2017) find themselves enmeshed in the politics of the Third Reich, whereas those in Afterwards (2007) and The Walk Home (2014) contribute to maintaining British colonialism in Kenya and Ireland. This paper proposes a narratological analysis, informed by theories within memory, trauma, and perpetrator studies, of the situated and multiperspectival narratives employed in the novels to reveal how Seiffert negotiates the ethical challenges implicit in the shades of grey existing between victims and perpetrators. It also intends to demonstrate that the tensions between the collective and the personal are deeply revealing in terms of exposing covert memory gaps and fostering new forms of solidarity.