Aleksandar Hemon’s Metafictionality and Representing Effects of Displacement in “The Conductor” and “The Bees, Part 1”

Year 2020, Volume: 2 Issue: 2, 159 - 169, 25.12.2020

Touhid Ahmed Chowdhury

Abstract

On the outbreak of the Yugoslav war, writers like Aleksandar Hemon suddenly found himself stranded in a foreign land watching his beloved country breaking into parts and people fleeing out of the country to be alive. This sudden displacement and the feeling of cut off from home have affected the creative mind of Hemon, resulting in a metafictional narrative of Balkan characters in his short stories. The trauma of displacement and the struggle of adapting into a new life in a new country haunt the characters of the short stories collection "Love and Obstacles". The narrator in “The Conductor” is a well-accepted and known writer in the United States; however, his Bosnian past regularly intervenes into his present life. Whereas in the story “The Bees, Part 1,” father of the narrator finds it hard to get along with the Canadian lifestyle, therefore, he starts a project of his own of writing about his family history instead of going to a language school or social meetings. In short, writing has helped him overcome the trauma of displacement.

This paper will argue that Aleksandar Hemon uses metafictionality as a tool to create new identities for his displaced characters, and the experience of displacement acts as one of the many catalysts in creating and re-creating new identities.

Keywords

Displacement, Metafictionality, Identity, Eastern Europe, Aleksandar Hemon

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