Reimagining Centrality in Cătălin Dorian Florescu’s Short Stories

Abstract

Cătălin Dorian Florescu’s main tropes had been traditionally confined to the stylistic regime of the novel until 2017, when he opted for a short stories format in his volume Der Nabel der Welt. My paper will investigate the themes and dynamics of Florescu’s dialect of displacement, cultural transfer and the search for a homeland in this collection of short stories, while also paying close attention to the framework of diasporic identity as it was projected in his earlier works. Drawing on contemporary theories concerning displacement and diasporas, my contribution seeks to explore the specific manner in which these issues calibrate Florescu’s original perspective of what it means to have a coherent individual identity against the fragile background of a European one.