The Angel of Nostalgia Trapped between East and West
The Angel of Nostalgia Trapped between East and West

Author(s): Marta Fernàndez Soldado
Subject(s): Geography, Regional studies, Studies of Literature, Sociology, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Andrzej Stasiuk; Dubravka Ugrešić; Yuri Andrukhovych; east; west; identity; Yugoslavia; image of Berlin;
Summary/Abstract: This is how Andrzej Stasiuk, returning to the places he has traveled to and recreating them with a map in front of him and his baggage of memories, images, scents, coins and stamps, depicts a sort of nihilistic monetary flow from the West to the East. On the Road to Babadag. Travels in the Other Europe is the writing in movement of the Polish writer’s wanderings through Eastern Europe, first published in 2004, right at the time when Poland joined the European Union and went the opposite direction, westward. But Stasiuk is not interested in travelling to the Western cities where all wishes seemed to emerge from the eighties onwards and rather, finding himself in Słubice in the summer of 1983 or 1984, looking across from the river to Frankfurt, turns his back and 'that same evening I headed back, east. Like a dog, I had sniffed an unfamiliar locale, then moved on.’

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