On the periphery: Contemporary exile fiction and Hungary

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the concept of the periphery as a geopolitical and aesthetic category in the works of three exilic writers of Hungarian origin, Agota Kristof, Tibor Fischer, and Zsuzsa Bánk. These three novels, which have not previously been studied in a comparative framework, explore resistance, terror, and trauma in post-war Eastern Europe, mobilizing a set of tropes that portray the limits of everyday life in Hungary during and after the Second World War. Relying on the concept of “peripheral aesthetics”, it argues that a close reading of Kristof’s The Notebook (Le Grand Cahier [1986]), Fischer’s Under the Frog (1992), and Bánk’s The Swimmer (Der Schwimmer [2002]) reveals that the peripheral spaces these novels depict are associated both with the geopolitical location of Hungary and with the traumas of the post-war period. The three novels make use of various strategies of peripheral aesthetics which reflect different stages of coping with the collective traumas of the region.