Haunted Spaces: Ghosts and Postmemories in Adriaan Van Dis’ Land of Lies
Haunted Spaces: Ghosts and Postmemories in Adriaan Van Dis’ Land of Lies

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the childhood home as a space for engaging with postmemories of postcolonialism and imprisonment during the Second World War. In the autobiographical short story Land of Lies, Dutch author Adriaan van Dis interrogates the notion of identity and the relations between children and parents which are strongly connected by the differences between European spatiality and the colonized spatiality. Permanently debating the many ramifications of racial differences, Van Dis shows how the parents’ memories are transmitted to the next generation not only through storytelling, but also through constant projection and investment. The aim of this paper is to show how postcolonial identities are built at the crossroad between familial history and the uncertainty of memory in order to provide a larger framework for interrogating the postcolonial sense of belonging.

• Details
• Contents