Mutual Exotization: Europe and the Balkans.Interview with Belfjore Qose and Christian Voß
Mutual Exotization: Europe and the Balkans.Interview with Belfjore Qose and Christian Voß

Summary/Abstract: Vesna Goldsworthy is currently professor of creative writing at the University of Exeter and the University of East Anglia. Her first book was “Inventing Ruritania. The Imperialism of the Imagination” (1998) in which she applies the constructivist and orientalist paradigm to Southeast Europe and depicts Balkan stereotypes in Western European travel writings and popular culture since the myth of Dracula. A dense summary of this reference work can be found in the anthology “The Balkans and the borders in the head” edited mostly in German in 2004 by Karl Kaser in the Austrian Wieser encyclopedia. Only from the very title an attentive reader could understand twenty years ago that Goldsworthy is way too good and too creative for a “normal academic”, so she switched to literature. Her memoir “Chernobyl Strawberries” from 2005 tells the story of her childhood and youth in Yugoslav Serbia. The German translation with the title “Heimweh nach Nirgendwo” was highly praised by Elke Heidenreich who after her career as a cabaret artist became popular as a book reviewer on TV and radio and was widely received. Goldsworthy’s poetry in “The Angel of Salonika” and her recent novels such as “Gorsky” and “Monsieur Ka” transpose her personal experience of migration, acculturation and intercultural perception and misunderstandings to London during the Cold War and the East-West bloc confrontation.

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