Queer Elements: The Poetics and Politics of Antje Rávic Strubel's Literary Style

Abstract

The fiction of , author of the critically acclaimed novels , Tupolev 134) and , Colder layers of air), is experimental, challenging, polyvalent, and socially critical. These facets of her work give shape to a writing style that is multiply queer. Her stories construct an array of dynamically queer identities and take queer approaches to narrative conventions and German cultural history. This essay develops the concept of queer style and explores connections between poetics and politics through five distinctive elements of Strubel’s fiction: disorientation, uncanniness, writerly plurality, mysterious narrators, and multivalent symbolism. It features a reading of Strubel’s lesser-known novel , Going astray) as exemplary of this queer style.