Europe’s Compass: Flight Discourse and Mediterraneanism in Contemporary Novels

Mediterranneanism – as an “other heading” of Europe at its southern peripheries, including and fending off the other (according to Tomislav Zelic) – is a new topic in contemporary literary works on refugees. This essay draws some lines of research, focussing on the Mediterranean Sea as a narrated passage between the continents, an area of a clash of cultures, a heterotopic space, and a political hotspot of flight tragedies in Bodo Kirchhoff ’s “Novelle“ Widerfahrnis (2016) and Mathias Énard’s novels “Erzähl ihnen von Schlachten, Königen und Elefanten” (2010/2013) and “Straße der Diebe” (2012/2013).