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Fictions of Migration
in Contemporary Britain
and Ireland

Fictions of Migration in Contemporary Britain
and Ireland
in Contemporary
Britain and Ireland
Dalarna University
Falun, Sweden
ISBN 978-3-030-41052-0 ISBN 978-3-030-41053-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41053-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
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Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgments
This study would never have come into existence without the support
from various institutions and individuals throughout the years. I would
like to thank the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet ) for their
financial support in 2011–2013 for the research project (Ref. No.: 2010–
1820) that was the foundation of the present volume. Parts of the re-
search for this monograph have been presented at international, mostly
multi- and interdisciplinary conferences on migration, comparative litera-
ture, and Irish Studies and have consequently benefited from challenging
interrogations by specialists in these areas. This work has also been pre-
sented in separate contributions to the research seminars held by the re-
search group Literature, Identity and Transculturality within the research
area on Intercultural Studies at Dalarna University, Sweden. Special thanks
are due to my colleagues in this group for their inspirational responses and
seminar discussions.
Thanks are also due to Edinburgh University Press for granting me
permission to republish a revised version of my article on Colum Mc-
Cann, which was originally published as “From Exilic to Mobile Identi-
ties: Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin and the Cosmopolitaniza-
tion of Contemporary Ireland,” Irish University Review 46 (2): 359–376.
https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2016.0232.
I would also like to thank my colleagues at the NOS-HS workshop
series on “Temporalities and Subjectivities of Crossing: Contemporary
Public Migration Narratives in Europe” (2019–2020) and particularly
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Prof. Johan Schimanski for extending his invitation to be part of this

project in 2018. The insights and thought-provoking multidisciplinary
discussions at the workshops in the series have provided a fruitful forum
in which my own research for this monograph has found a welcoming
home.
I owe a bounty of immense gratitude and love to my friends and family,
to my parents, José and Carmen, to my sisters, Esperanza, Mª José, and
Montse and most particularly to my husband Billy for his unremitting
support and love, and to our children Gabriel and Carla, my guiding stars.
Contents
1 Introduction: Migration, Mobility and the Redefinition of

National Literatures in a Global Context 1
2 A Cosmopolitan Revision of the Postcolonial “Home” in

Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore and Foreigners 33
3 From Exilic to Mobile Identities: Colum McCann’s Let the

Great World Spin and the Cosmopolitanisation of Irish
Reality 61
4 “Memories of Lost Things”: Narratives of Afropolitan

Identity in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea and Gravel
Heart 85
5 Against the Fear of Complexity: Ethical and Aesthetic

Engagement with De-racialising the Muslim Migrant in
Elif Shafak’s Honour 107
6 Solidarity Through the Bare Life of Migrants and “noeuds

de mémoire” in Rose Tremain’s The Colour and The Gustav
Sonata 135
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 “A Map of Bird Migration”: Redefinitions of National

Identity Through Transnational Mobility and
Multidirectional Memory in Evelyn Conlon’s Not the Same
Sky 175
8 Concluding Remarks: Timespace and Affective Networks

in Contemporary Fictions of Migration 197
Index 207
About the Author
Carmen Zamorano Llena is Associate Professor of English at Dalarna

University, Sweden. She is also the Literary Editor of the peer-reviewed
journal Nordic Irish Studies, and Series Co-editor of Peter Lang’s Cul-
tural Identity Studies series. She has published widely on contemporary
Irish and British fiction and poetry, and is co-editor of several collec-
tions of essays, including Redefinitions of Irish Identity: A Postnationalist
Approach (2010), Transculturality and Literature: Redefinitions of Iden-
tity in Contemporary Literature (2013), and Authority and Wisdom in the
New Ireland: Studies in Literature and Culture (2016). Her research in-
terests include literary gerontology, literature and globalisation and litera-
tures of migration in Britain and Ireland, and she has published extensively
in these fields of specialization. She is currently a participant researcher in
the funded NOS-HS workshop series “Temporalities and Subjectivities of
Crossing: Contemporary Public Migration Narratives in Europe” (2019–
2020), and is also leading a research group on literatures of migration in
Europe at Dalarna University.
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Migration, Mobility

and the Redefinition of National Literatures
in a Global Context
A Sense of Order Amidst

the Turbulence of Migration
The contemporary context, in which the present literary study of Irish and
British prose fiction is situated, is first and foremost defined as the age of
globalisation with migration often regarded as one of its most salient fea-
tures, which, in the words of sociologist Nikos Papastergiadis (2000), “in
its endless motion, surrounds and pervades almost all aspects of contem-
porary society” (1). Scholars in globalisation studies coincide in regarding
the increased volume and pace of the flow of people as one of the most
dramatic changes that society has experienced in the last three decades
(Appadurai 1996; Bauman 1998), as the number of migrants has reached
peaks never experienced before in history. The most recent estimate con-
cerning global figures is that in 2019 there were 272 million international
migrants in the world, and that, if gathered within a single nation-state,
the number of the migrants worldwide would make for the fifth most
populous nation in the world (UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs 2019; International Organization for Migration 2018). As glob-
alisation analysts contend, the phenomenon of migration is not new, but
what makes it different from previous migratory movements is “the scale
and complexity of movement [whose] consequences have exceeded earlier
predictions” (Papastergiadis 2000, 2).
In its simplest form, migration is defined as the “movement of peo-
ple and their temporary or permanent geographical relocation” (Held
© The Author(s) 2020 1

C. Zamorano Llena, Fictions of Migration in Contemporary Britain
and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41053-7_1
2 C. ZAMORANO LLENA
et al. 1999, 283). This simplified definition of the term allows for a
broad understanding of migratory movements, extending from the ear-
liest displacement of hunters and gatherers from Africa to Eurasia, to the
waves of migrant labour determined by colonialist and imperial enterprises
between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; equally, it involves mass
labour migration from south to north and east to west based on the pull
exerted by the processes of industrialisation and accompanying urbanisa-
tion of societies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The gen-
eral thread that often unites this diversity of protagonists and migratory
movements is the human need to change geographical locations in search
of an improvement in economic, political and human conditions of living.
However, one of the key distinguishing features between past migrations
and current forms of global migration is what Papastergiadis (2000) has
termed “the turbulence of migration” in the contemporary context.
The turbulence of migration, Papastergiadis’s concept inspired by
James Rosenau’s work in international relationships, echoes the differ-
ent levels of transnational interconnection, but it also refers to the break-
down of easily identifiable patterns in human migration. This disruption
has been fostered by the present globalising process, in which the rev-
olution in technology, transport and communication systems has facil-
itated, not only the development of new economic hubs in the world
away from the traditional centres in the West and the northern hemi-
sphere, but also drastic changes in the nature of migration patterns and
the migratory experience. Contemporary migration is characterised by
its multidirectional, reversible and often unpredictable patterns. In ear-
lier periods, however, migration patterns were easily traceable in linear
terms and migration was often perceived as irreversible, as suggested by
the Irish tradition of the so-called American Wake, a farewell party to
the Irish emigrant, whose likelihood of return was often considered so
unlikely that, as Patrick Fitzgerald and Brian Lambkin (2008) observe,
“the departure was treated as if it were an actual death” (17). The idea of
a return to one’s country of birth often impregnated the migrant mind,
reflected, for example, in the experience of late nineteenth-century Irish
migrants to North America. Amongst disadvantaged migrants, the return
journey was often perceived as an unrealisable dream and fed their nos-
talgia for their land of origins, exemplified in many of the Irish immi-
grant ballads, such as “Hills of Donegal,” as well as in numerous letters
sent back home. As A. B. McMillan wrote in April 1894 from Pittsburgh
1 INTRODUCTION: MIGRATION, MOBILITY AND THE REDEFINITION … 3
to her sister Eliza in Newtownards, Co. Down, she lamented her deci-
sion to leave for the United States: “times is very dull in this Country, I
sometimes think that if I had the money I would go Back Home again”
(qtd. in Fitzgerald and Lambkin 2008, 193). Those with better financial
resources could more easily realise their dream, which was also aided by
the fact that the transition from sail to steam in the nineteenth century
involved safer and much more inexpensive travelling. According to David
Fitzpatrick (2010), between 1871 and 1921, as a consequence of these
technological developments, the migrants’ travel back to Ireland became
commonplace, and by the 1890s, “the ‘Returned Yank’ as well as the
Irish-born tourist had become a familiar figure in rural Ireland” (634).
As in earlier migration processes, social and economic differences are
still part and parcel of the experience of contemporary international
migrants, and technological development is also crucial in determining
changes in migration patterns. The compression of travel time and the
reduction in the actual cost of travel have enabled an increase in the vol-
ume and frequency of migratory movements, as well as the possibility
for a number of migrants to maintain frequent transnational contact, not
only with their families and close community in their country of origin,
but also with friends and family that may also be based, temporarily or
permanently, in other parts of the world. Similarly, the remote interaction
across space enabled by videoconferencing systems as well as by instant
messaging, both written and voiced, has also changed the nature of the
links maintained between migrants and their communities “back home”
and across the globe. Although these systems do not replace face-to-face
communication, they partly compensate for its absence, particularly for
those international migrants whose economic situation does not allow
them to enjoy the benefits of low-cost travel. As a number of recent stud-
ies on the relationship between migration and electronic communication
observe (Alonso and Oiarzabal 2010; Madianou and Miller 2012), medi-
ated communication has become a crucial component in the making and
maintenance of transnational social relationships and “contribute[s] to the
creation of social structure” (Fortunati et al. 2012, xx). It can further be
argued that traditional understandings of social structures have been rev-
olutionised by contemporary migration, and this, together with the new
webs of transnational socio-economic, political and environmental inter-
dependence, has dramatically transformed the nature of societies.
4 C. ZAMORANO LLENA
These momentous, rapid transformations have revolutionised tradi-

tional Weltanschauungen and can be perceived as turbulences that chal-
lenge the traditional view of societies as homogenous, fixed and rooted
to a specific geographical space while sharing certain common values
and traditions. Papastergiadis’s “turbulence” is partly meant to echo the
fears felt by many in relation to the transformation of seemingly peren-
nial social patterns due to increasingly unpredictable migratory patterns.
These concerns are evident in the abundance of literature that emerged,
particularly in the 1990s, analysing the threats of globalisation to the
nation-state, or in the current upsurge of extreme right-wing parties in
many European countries which have at the core of their programme
what they often term, in a rather euphemistic manner, a concern with
immigration and integration politics. As Anthony J. Marsella and Erin
Ring (2003) observe, “the fear of the new immigrants may be related to
the widespread fear of uncertainty in our world. […] Our world seems
to be unraveling and things seem out of control and, under these cir-
cumstances, all changes are suspect” (8). However, as Lord Alfred Ten-
nyson (2003) already concluded in his implicit reflections on the conse-
quences of the industrial revolution in his 1835 poem “Locksley Hall,”
change is inevitable and often preferable to stasis. Our psychosocial sur-
vival amidst such turbulence depends on the ability to understand that,
behind the apparent chaos of the world spinning, to borrow from Ten-
nyson’s poem, there lay possibilities which can be grasped through the
study and identification of the new emergent social structures. As spe-
cialists in various disciplines identified as early as the mid-1990s, there
is a need to move away from the paradigm of the national, which has
dominated various academic disciplines since the late nineteenth century.
Global, transnational mobility of people, goods and information have
changed perceptions of time and space, their interrelationship and their
interdependent role in the formation of collective and individual identities
and sense of belonging.
Migration and Changes

to Constructs of National Identity
In the study of migration, for over a century the national paradigm was
conducive to a reductive view of the experience of migration in relation to
the nation-state. As Christiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder (2009) contend,
“in the century and a half of national perspectives in historiography from
the 1830s to the 1960s, emigration as departure from the nation was little
studied and immigration received attention in terms of ‘assimilation’ to

the institutions and culture of the receiving society” (1). The perception
of “the natural condition of man [as] sedentary” and of the “movement
away from the natal place [as] a deviant activity associated with disorga-
nization and a threat to the established harmony of Gemeinschaft rela-
tionships” meant that the perception of migration as inextricable to any
understanding of history did not occur until the 1990s (Jackson 1969, 3,
qtd. in Fitzgerald and Lambkin 2008, 5). It was then that the narrative
of the nation in what Benedict Anderson seminally defined as “imagined
communities” started to be crucially transformed by migration.
According to Anderson (1991), in the nation-building project, the
novel in particular plays a crucial role in the process of “imagining” a
collective narrative of belonging. Consequently, an analysis of the man-
ner in which migration has transformed and become part of a redefined
understanding of “imagined communities” should necessarily include an
examination of how fictional works since the 1990s have articulated and,
thereby, contributed to this transformation of the nation, as well as offer-
ing an insight into the complexities of articulating these new collective
and individual identities in a transnational context. This, in turn, implies
a necessary transformation of the study of literature and, particularly, of
national literatures.
Significantly, some of the most prominent figures voicing the need to
re-examine the nature of national literatures and of literary studies as a
discipline originated in the field of comparative literature. As Haun Saussy
(2006) notes in her commissioned ten-year report on the state of com-
parative literature for the American Comparative Literature Association,
the discipline itself finds its origins in the era of nationalisms. One of its
founding texts, Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne (1810), was written
to explain to a French readership what made “verbal art” the represen-
tation of a distinctive particular people and its culture, taking German
literature as a case in point. This contrastive approach, used in order to
show what made national literatures different and a reflection of a specific
Volkgeist, differed from the subsequently dominant approach in compar-
ative literature in that the latter aimed at identifying and studying “the
mutual relations of different literatures” rather than their differences (van
Tieghem 1931, qtd. in Saussy 2006, 9). In both cases, however, there
is an explicit or implicit understanding that each individual literature is
different, often tendentiously understood as monolingual and monocul-
tural, and contained within the borders of the national paradigm in which
6 C. ZAMORANO LLENA
it finds its roots. Therefore, comparative literature as a discipline was also

shaped and determined by the nation-building project that obviated dif-
ferences in order to strengthen the creation of a literature deemed repre-
sentative of a unified nation. However, the discipline’s methodology and
desire to constantly deconstruct the borders of national literatures and
languages arguably made its specialists, at the time of globalisation, more
perceptive to the changes in national literary paradigms caused by current
forms of transnational migration of people, ideas and texts.
At the turn of the third millennium, a number of specialists in litera-
ture in English already contended that globalisation had led to a number
of changes in the understanding of national literatures and their study.
These studies signalled the entrance of literature into globalisation studies
and their main arguments were often in line with the dominant percep-
tion in the area in the 1990s, particularly from sociological perspectives,
that globalisation and migration had destabilised traditional definitions of
the nation and, thereby, the foundations of the nation-state (Castles and
Miller 2013; Joppke 1998; Sassen 1998; Castles and Davidson 2000).
In line with this view, many of the critical works emerging specifically
within the field of Anglophone literary studies shared a sense that the
national was being diluted under the influence of globalisation, and that
compartmentalised national literatures were entering a process of interna-
tionalisation in which the national was being superseded by the increas-
ingly relevant literature of globalisation, reminiscent of Goethe’s famous
1827 pronouncement that “national literature is now a rather unmeaning
term; the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive
to hasten its approach” (qtd. in Damrosch 2003b, 1). In 2001, the MLA
periodical inaugurated the year with a seminal special issue analysing the
globalisation of literary studies. In the introduction to this issue, Giles
Gunn (2001) observes that the object of literary study has been modified
with the “loosening [of] national […] paradigms that once organized lit-
erary studies” and that “academic specialities have become more nation-
ally borderless of late” (16, 18). Similarly, in the same issue, Wai Chee
Dimock (2001) argues for a “denationalization” of literature (176), and
in The South Atlantic Quarterly special issue on what its editors term “the
globalization of fiction / the fiction of globalization,” Susie O’Brien and
Imre Szeman (2001) explore the possibilities offered by globalisation “to
think of literature outside the framework of national literatures” (605).
Opposed to the above views is comparativist David Damrosch’s claim
(2003a) that the change in the national paradigm does not infer the
elimination of the national borders due to the threat of globalisation, a

view that since the 2000s also started to become more widely defended
in globalisation studies, and which sociologist Robert J. Holton (2011)
summarises with the contention that “while the nation state has been
radically challenged by a number of globalisation processes, its historical
dynamic is very far from being played out” (124). In line with this inclu-
sive view of globalisation, in the field of literature, Damrosch argues for
the pluralisation of the study of national literatures which should rather
be understood as a “network of traditions.” Damrosch (2003a) upholds
the necessary preservation of national traditions, “which are hardly about
to wither away” (328), but redefined through a more prominent and con-
scious intertwining of the national and the international. In this sense, a
comparative perspective can be highly beneficial to the study of national
literatures, as it highlights the fact that, as Damrosch (2010) claims, “in-
dividual literatures are never chthonic self-creations; they take shape in an
international framework” (26).
Fictions of Migration in the Redefinition

of National Literatures
Adopting an international and comparative approach contributes to the
identification of a number of key aspects to consider in the analysis of
the manner in which national literary traditions are reconfigured in the
contemporary global context. First and foremost, migration emerges as
a crucial concept in its various significations. On the one hand, the the-
matic analysis of how contemporary transnational migration redefines col-
lective and individual identities as articulated in contemporary fiction is
one of the most salient approaches to the study of contemporary litera-
ture in the age of globalisation. Previous analyses of the interrelationship
between literature and globalisation have mostly focused on other aspects
pertaining to the current globalising process. As in the mid-1990s, glob-
alisation spread its remit beyond the purely economic terrain, thematic
concerns migrated between seemingly disconnected fields of study and
became analysed from various disciplinary perspectives. The interpenetra-
tion of culture and economy that has been at the centre of analyses of
postmodernity, regarded as the condition of society in the contemporary
global context, generated in literature an aesthetics of globalisation that is
reflected in the proliferation of a number of thematic concerns character-
istic of the global age. In this sense, analyses of the literature produced in
8 C. ZAMORANO LLENA
this context have often focused on aspects that are a direct manifestation
of the market economy and the technological developments that char-
acterise and energise globalising processes. One such example is James
Annesley’s Fictions of Globalization: Consumption, the Market and the
Contemporary American Novel (2006), Suman Gupta’s focus on global or
anti-globalisation protests and global cities as part of his landmark study
Globalization and Literature (2009), and, more recently, Philip Leonard’s
Literature After Globalization (2013), with its focus on technology and
its challenge to the traditional definition of the nation-state, as suggested
by the subtitle to this volume.
Some significant analyses of the relationship between literature and
globalisation have taken migration as a point of departure to analyse the
literature produced in the present. In the European context, many of
these studies have only focused on literature produced by first- or second-
generation migrants to European centres, dealing mostly with their expe-
rience of migration (Gebauer and Lausten 2010). While the present study
also has migration as a thematic focus, the main aim is to analyse the
manner in which specific national literary systems have been transformed
under the influence of contemporary migration, including migration as a
theme in the work of migrant and non-migrant authors, as well as study-
ing the manner in which these texts suggest different ways of looking
at migration and its central role in the renovation of national literatures
in a transnational context. Therefore, the present study aims to analyse
what will be termed fictions of migration, a concept that is linked to Rita
Barnard’s “fictions of the global.” If, as Barnard (2009) claims referring
to Anderson’s seminal study, the novel is the genre that crucially con-
tributes to the formation of the national “imagined community,” a study
of the manner in which this community has changed under the influ-
ence of globalisation should naturally take prose fiction as the object of
study. Whereas Barnard’s “fiction of the global” analyses the manner in
which fiction reflects how technological and economic interconnections
have changed traditional understandings of national imagined communi-
ties and contributed to the formation of global imagined communities,
the present study will focus on human migration and its role in fostering
similar changes within and across national literary systems, particularly
focusing on the Irish and British cases.
Another aspect of current migration that has a direct impact on def-
initions of national literature is the transnational relocation of authors
and texts and the effects on definitions of national literature that follow
from this cultural exchange. This study will focus particularly, though not
exclusively, on authors whose work reflects their continued links not only
with the literary tradition in the country where they were born, educated
and often published in, but also with that of their chosen country of res-
idence. The migration of representative fiction writers of the current lit-
erary scene in the selected countries for this study has a double effect; on
the one hand, it generates a multidirectional interrelationship between lit-
erary traditions. On the other, it also contributes to an understanding that
national traditions are radically transformed by the work of these immi-
grant and emigrant authors. As several critics have noted, their texts often
circulate in different literary systems and contribute, in turn, to subverting
the exclusionary practices of traditional nation-building projects through
literature. The making of national literature in a globalised context, as
Damrosch (2010) contends, cannot depend on “a fatherland’s Mutter-
sprache or on authors’ passports but on their works’ effective presence in
a nation’s literary culture” (28). Just as the increased volume and pace of
the mobility of people, information and goods in the age of globalisation
make migration a central theme in the socio-cultural context in which lit-
erary works are produced and in their fictional narratives, the migration
of authors and texts makes mobility and the porosity of borders central
features in the redefinition of national literature in the present context.
Mobility, however, is not new, particularly in Irish and British fiction.
What is characteristic of the fiction of migration in the age of globalisa-
tion is the increased awareness of the weight of migration as a thematic
concern, as well as a way of refiguring what constitutes national literature.
Consequently, a study of the fictions of migration in the present context
will necessarily have to relate to previous forms of the mobility of people,
authors and texts, as well as the different bodies of literature that they
originated; equally important is their relationship with the national litera-
ture, in relation to which they have often been defined as literature of the
margins, a perspective which underlines the rigid demarcations between
national literature and “the rest.” In this sense, a study of the connection
between present fictions of migration and earlier migration literature, as
well as postcolonial writing and new forms of cosmopolitan writing, with
special attention to their role in redefining national literature and liter-
ary traditions, becomes paramount in terms of setting the basis for the
present study.
Although migration is purportedly one of the oldest literary topoi, with
Homer’s The Odyssey being one of its earliest expressions, it is mostly
10 C. ZAMORANO LLENA
since the 1990s that it has received a large degree of critical attention
in the field of literary studies. Many academic works, with their preoc-
cupation for categorisation, have attempted a classification of the differ-
ent texts, mostly fiction, that have migration as a central thematic con-
cern. The terminology is, at times, used ambiguously. Thus, in their pref-
ace to the seminal text Writing Across Worlds: Literature and Migra-
tion (1995), the editors outline the development of “migrant literatures”
(King et al. 1995). This concept includes first-generation migrants writing
in the language of their country of adoption as well as authors of migrant
descent, and the texts in all cases focus on the experience of migration
and related themes, ranging from the experience of rootlessness, displace-
ment and nostalgia, to complex issues of identity formation derived from
the encounter between cultural differences. This type of writing is, how-
ever, referred to as “migration literature” by Mirjam Gebauer and Pia
Schwarz Lausten (2010, 2). Søren Frank (2010), on the other hand, pro-
vides a useful disambiguation of the terms when he differentiates between
“migrant literature,” as that written by migrants, and “migration litera-
ture,” written by both migrant and non-migrant authors and in which
“the relationship between the literary content and style” takes precedence
over the “authorial background” (44). Frank’s latter concept is one of
the inspirational sources for Sten Pultz Moslund’s Migration, Literature
and Hybridity (2010), but is further complicated when considering Roy
Sommer’s (2001) classification of fictions of migration in contemporary
British literature, where he considers the “migration novel” as a subcate-
gory of what he calls the “multicultural novel,” and defines it as focusing
on diasporic experiences while taking authorial background as an implicit
classifying principle. In an attempt to escape the traps of using a terminol-
ogy that can easily be perceived as equivocal, the present study focuses on
fictions of migration as a useful concept that, with its connections to the
category of “fictions of the global,” suggests the emphasis on the role of
migration in the age of globalisation in reshaping national literatures. In
this sense, fiction of migration links with the recent critical attention to
the manner in which, as Rebecca L. Walkowitz (2006) argues, “the polit-
ical and social processes of immigration shape the whole literary system,
the relationships among all of the works in a literary culture, and not sim-
ply the part of that system that involves books generated by immigrant
populations” (533). The present study will thus contend that it is not only
immigration and the work of immigrant authors that shape a literary cul-
ture, but also the work of both non-migrant and migrant authors whose
works enter a dialogue with their country of residence and, in the case
of migrant authors, with their country of birth, thus expanding under-
standings of national culture and stressing the interaction between various
literary systems and historical realities.
The Role of National Differences

and Postcolonialism in the Emergence
of Fictions of Migration
Despite the role of globalisation in changing perceptions of migration in
relation to literature, the development of literature of migration and its
movement from the margins to the centre of literary systems does not
occur at the same pace or in the same manner in the different national
literatures. This is another aspect which, incidentally, also explains the
impossibility of completely discarding the national framework within liter-
ary studies, particularly in relation to migration, in a global context. With
their focus on migration literature being understood as literature written
by immigrants, Gebauer and Lausten (2010) already note how the cen-
trality of this literature differs in the various national literary apparatuses
(2). In Germany, for example, migration literature finds its origins in the
Gastarbeiterlitteratur produced since the 1960s by those migrants who
arrived in Germany through guest worker programmes established with
countries such as Turkey, Spain, Italy and Greece. This type of migra-
tion was different from the one experienced by Britain or France, which,
in the twentieth century, was initially mostly based on immigration from
former colonies after the Second World War and which was often sub-
sumed within the label of postcolonial writing. The antecedents of the
literature of migration in these countries are radically different, therefore,
from those in other European contexts, such as Spain or Italy, in which
literature of migration is often identified as a type of literature that has
developed in recent times, mostly caused by the increase in either forced
migration on economic or political grounds, or as part of the privileged
transmigrants relocating permanently or temporarily as middle- to high-
rank workers in large private corporations or supranational institutions.
Consequently, the literature produced by writers of migrant background
developing in these various national contexts, despite sharing certain the-
matic concerns, such as explorations of transcultural memory, encounters
between different cultures and sense of in-betweenness, evolves in differ-

ent ways in relation to the redefinition of national literatures. Neverthe-
less, it is noticeable that despite the diverse origins and time span for the
development of these migration literatures, there seems to be an increas-
ing concern with the manner in which migration transforms national liter-
ary systems. Whereas most studies have focused in practice on how liter-
ature produced by immigrants “invites us,” in the words of Gebauer and
Lausten (2010), “to reconceptualize many of the familiar assumptions
of cultural cohesion traditionally linked with nation-states” (3), the cur-
rent study aims to expand this analysis by including non-migrant authors
whose work expresses a thematic and aesthetic engagement with fictions
of migration (such as Evelyn Conlon in the Irish case, or Rose Tremain
in the British context), as well as by authors who, after relocating to a
country which is not their country of birth, resist, as expressed in inter-
views and through their literary works, categories such as diasporic or exile
writing, with which they do not identify, as their work shows the manner
in which it belongs to a network of diverse traditions; examples of this
are Colum McCann in the case of Ireland and Elif Shafak in relation to
Britain.
In the Irish and particularly British contexts, the challenge to tradi-
tional understandings of national literature promoted by migration in the
context of globalisation finds its antecedents in the field of postcolonial
studies. The analysis of the interrelationship between globalisation and
postcolonial studies in literature has gained particular prominence since
the beginning of the twenty-first century. This process was particularly
favoured by the modifications in definitions of globalisation that occurred
since the mid-1990s, according to which globalisation was not exclusively
defined as a contemporary economic and political process, but as a cul-
tural, sociological and historical phenomenon that included the imperial
and colonial expansion of the sixteenth century, and the subsequent pro-
cesses of decolonisation and postcolonialism. One of the first critics to
analyse this connection and its implications in the literary field was Paul
Jay, who, in his talk at the Modern Language Association in December
2000, identified crucial points of contact and divergence between the
historical processes of globalisation and postcolonialism, and how these
explain the differences in the literary texts produced from these two his-
torical perspectives.
According to Jay (2003), there are two main approaches to the study
of the interrelationship between globalisation and postcolonialism. In the
first approach, whereas globalisation is characterised as a postnational,

contemporary phenomenon unfolding in the era of postmodernity, post-
colonialism is associated with modernity and thereby linked to the epoch
of the nation-state, regarding globalisation as a threat for proposing “a
future in which the nation-state plays an increasingly peripheral role”
(86). The second approach, however, does not recognise a historical
break between globalisation and postcolonialism, but sees them rather
as different phenomena of a historical continuum and regards “the his-
tories of colonization, decolonization, and postcolonialism [as] part of
the long history of globalization” (Jay 2003, 86). As Jay (2003) argues,
this second approach is more productive, since it contributes to iden-
tifying “some level of continuity between the issues taken up by both
postcolonial and global literatures” (86). However, he also acknowledges
the challenges, particularly for postcolonialism and postcolonial litera-
tures, in seeing these two processes as inextricably interrelated, since
globalisation not only poses a threat to the core purpose of postcolo-
nial texts, namely to contribute to the process of nation-building in the
wake of colonisation, but also symbolises the kind of cultural and eco-
nomic colonisation that postcolonialism opposes. In the face of this dual-
istic understanding of the relationship between globalisation and post-
colonialism, which potentially leads to the reification of an essentialis-
ing view of culture and an idealisation of hybridity which obliterates the
potential dangers of globalisation, Jay underscores the potential benefits
of focusing on the synergies between postcolonial and global approaches
to the study of literary texts. According to Jay (2003), “transnational lit-
erary studies, whether it presents itself as postcolonial or global, has to
begin with a recognition that cultures have always travelled and changed,
that the effects of globalisation, dramatic as they are, only represent in
an accelerated form something that has always taken place: the inex-
orable change that occurs through intercultural contact, as uneven as
the forms it takes may be” (88). Thus, the interrelationship between
globalisation and postcolonial studies enables the challenge of essential-
ising tendencies of literary systems, Western or postcolonial, driven by
a nation-building project. Jay demonstrates this contention through his
analysis of the literature produced in geopolitical areas that are charac-
terised by transnational and transcultural exchanges, often with postcolo-
nial and neo-colonial histories, namely the Caribbean, South Asia and
the United States/Hispanic America. However, this viewpoint is also par-
ticularly fruitful when approaching the study of contemporary writing
in the colonial centre, particularly of British writing produced since the

late 1990s. In this sense, writers such as Caryl Phillips, Abdulrazak Gur-
nah, Nadeem Aslam, Hari Kunzru, Kamila Shamsie or Leila Aboulela,
though having personal connections with former British colonies, often
explore in their work complex cultural and political transnational inter-
connections and their effect on individual identity, rather than focusing
on a postcolonial nation-building project in which literary texts would
mainly “write back” to expose the injustices of the colonial system. Con-
sequently, the work of these writers avoids the traditional academic cate-
gorisation into postcolonial literatures and shows how their concerns are
more closely related to those of other British-born writers, such as Rose
Tremain and David Mitchell, who have also shown in their work, epit-
omised by Tremain’s The Colour (2003) and Mitchell’s The Thousand
Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010), an interest in the re-examination of
the socio-cultural exchanges derived from the imperial expansion as part
of the history of globalisation. This implies that the thematic and, as will
be seen, stylistic concerns shared by these works take precedence over
the authorial background in the consideration of these texts as fictions of
migration.
Examining the inextricable interrelationship between globalisation and
postcolonialism in relation to the redefinition of the national literary
paradigm also enables a more cautious and balanced consideration of cul-
tural hybridity. A global, transnational analysis of the effects of globali-
sation in the light of the lessons learned from postcolonialism heightens
awareness about situations of inequality at a local and global level. This
not only counters idealisations of purity and stasis, promoted by national-
ist and, also not infrequently, by postcolonial discourses, but also prevents
the displacement of the pendulum to the opposite extreme and the con-
sequent fetishisation of cultural hybridity. As Jay (2010) forewarns,
We do need to guard against making a fetish of hybridity and multicul-

turalism when it simply represents a ‘mish-mash’ of homogenized cultural
forms shaped and dominated by mass media outlets in the West. […] We
need to take care not to obscure the asymmetrical nature of economic
and cultural change under the regimes of colonialism and contemporary
globalisation. (49, emphasis in the original)
The aim, therefore, in a globalised context characterised by transcultural,

transnational exchanges is to strike a difficult balance between traditional
nationalist constructs of the nation and the role of national literature

in the construction of the “imagined community,” on the one hand,
and those that “unthinkingly celebrate hybridity and multiculturalism as
paths to liberation from the paralyzing effects of cultural fundamentalisms
wherever they may be” (Jay 2010, 49). In a sense, the pull between
these two different positions opens up a creative “zone of instability,”
in Frantz Fanon’s words, in which “everything [is] to be called in ques-
tion” (1967, 183). This inquisitive, liminal standpoint is therefore crucial
when attempting to fruitfully re-examine definitions of national literature
and the national paradigm in the present transcultural context fostered by
globalisation.
Departing from Fanon’s seminal text, Imre Szeman (2003) notes how
the problematisation of the definition of national culture that charac-
terises current debates on the relationship between globalisation and lit-
erature was already central to colonial and postcolonial literature and
criticism. This concern emerges in the zone of instability created by the
pull between opposing positions, marked, in the postcolonial case, by the
conflict between “the ‘local’ culture of the colony and the cosmopolitan
‘world’ culture introduced by Western civilization” (5). In globalisation
studies, this relationship between the local, on the one hand, and the
global and cosmopolitan, on the other, has evolved from perceptions of
tension and virtual incompatibility between these concepts to a consen-
sual understanding of the complementarity of both positions necessary for
a more nuanced definition of the contemporary reality of globalisation.
In the field of literary studies, as contended in the present analysis, this
needs to be translated into an understanding that national literature needs
to incorporate the local as well as the global and cosmopolitan in order
to represent more accurately the transnational dimension that is inherent,
not only to literature in the present moment, but to the making of any
national literature, as evinced by the example of postcolonial writing.
and the Cosmopolitan Outlook
The necessary combination of the local and the cosmopolitan in the artic-
ulation of individual and collective identities in the present global context
has fostered the re-examination of the concept of cosmopolitanism since
the 1990s, particularly within the field of social sciences. With its roots
in the Greeks and the Stoic tradition (Held and Brown 2010, 4), and
even earlier in the Cynics, who first coined the expression “the citizen
of the cosmos” in the fourth century BC (Appiah 2006, xii), contem-
porary cosmopolitanism often engages with Enlightenment definitions,
particularly in relation to the work of Immanuel Kant. While acknowl-
edging the philosophical and historical roots of cosmopolitanism, con-
temporary scholars often focus on the empirical basis of this concept in
the global context. Following from the observation that the centrality of
the nation-state is questioned by the increasing dominance of the transna-
tional in economic, social, political and environmental spheres, contempo-
rary cosmopolitanism is redefined as an effort to grapple with the issues
raised by transnational exchanges, rather than as a dogmatic paradigm
providing a solution to these matters (Fine and Boon 2007, 6). From
this social sciences perspective, cosmopolitanism is understood not as an
abstract theory, but as an approach with a practical application to con-
temporary socio-political matters in which, as Robert Fine and Vivienne
Boon (2007) observe, “the nation-state no longer provides, if it ever did,
the natural space of social scientific articulation” (6). This is the distinc-
tion that sociologist Ulrich Beck (2006) establishes between philosoph-
ical cosmopolitanism, defined as the conscious, voluntary choice of an
elite, and the “cosmopolitanization of reality,” which is “a side effect of
unconscious decisions […], of global trade or global threats such as cli-
mate change, terrorism or financial crises” (19), and which consequently
affects all individuals in society, who are involuntarily subject to these
global forces. This cosmopolitanisation promotes a logic of “both-and”
which counters the exclusionist pitfalls of national(ist) discourses in order
to emphasise a logic of inclusive differentiation where the global and the
national are inextricably interrelated.
Cultural critics have underscored the interdisciplinary aspect of con-
temporary cosmopolitanism (Fine and Boon 2007, 6) and argued for
the articulation of what has been termed an “aesthetic cosmopolitanism”
(Regev 2007; Papastergiadis 2012). Aesthetic cosmopolitanism counters
the limitations that the national(ist) discourse imposes on aesthetic pro-
duction by emphasising, as Motti Regev (2007) contends, the productive
“intersection of and interplay between global fields of art and fields of
national culture” (123). The centrality of the aesthetic imagination in
the cosmopolitan project is not new. As Nikos Papastergiadis notes, the
Stoics already believed that the aesthetic imagination could contribute to
the development of cosmopolitanism. However, this intersection between
aesthetics and cosmopolitanism was obliterated by the rational basis of
Kant’s definition of the term, which “presumes the necessary triumph

of reason over the faulty, fleeting and flighty genius of imagination”
(Papastergiadis 2012, 88). The inclusive differentiation that characterises
the current cosmopolitanisation of reality helps the artist to deal with
what Fine and Boon (2007) identify as “the tension of finding oneself
simultaneously in two field [sic] of cultural production – the global and
the national – [and] is the source of all manner of possibilities that chal-
lenge the aura of local authenticity […] and expand, to use Bourdieu’s
phrase, the ‘radius of creativity’ in hybrid forms of genre” (13). Aesthetic
cosmopolitanism, therefore, underscores the necessary interrelationship
between the global and the national in artistic production, and the man-
ner in which the fructiferous collaboration between these different fields
of influence effects formal and thematic changes in artworks.
Despite the apparent favour bestowed on contemporary definitions of
cosmopolitanism to examine the present global epoch, this concept has
also been met with criticism. Such a critique has often served to tem-
per possible overenthusiastic undertones in elaborations of this concept,
as well as to highlight its implicit class, gender and Eurocentric bias. In
its pursuit of a cosmopolitan democracy and defence of humanitarian
ethics, the cosmopolitan project has been criticised for its implicit eli-
tist and Western perspective. This is reflected, on the one hand, in the
cosmopolitanism associated with global capitalism and led by multina-
tional corporations, in which an elite class reaps the benefits of interna-
tional travel and the consequent possible development of individual mul-
tiple allegiances to various localities. In the dominant neoliberal system,
in which class differences are greatly determined by economic power, this
popular understanding of cosmopolitanism, as Craig J. Calhoun (2002)
contends, “excludes many workers and others” (890). On the other hand,
the attribution of a dominant Western perspective of the cosmopolitan
project is observed in a tendency to produce a discourse based on binary
oppositions which view the West as the centre of capitalist globalisation
and motor of cosmopolitanism and the non-West as strongly dependent
on tradition (Calhoun 2002, 874). From this cosmopolitan perspective,
the centrality of the nation-state in nationalist discourses is purportedly
perceived as one-sidedly negative and the virtues of the cosmopolitan
project are instead extolled and regarded as globally applicable across state
boundaries. Such a view has been charged with assuming “a particular
cultural homogeneity” (Bhambra 2011, 314) and as being redolent of
the aims of the “civilizing mission behind colonialism” (Calhoun 2002,
875). In this sense, cosmopolitanism is reproached as belying a certain

disregard for the diverse development of the nation as a concept and a
socio-political reality in various geographical contexts across the globe;
it fosters the universalisation of European categories without addressing
the different socio-historical processes followed in non-Western societies
and the possible varieties of “cosmopolitanism that have emerged in non-
European contexts” (Bhambra 2011, 315). In the task of raising aware-
ness of the pitfalls of contemporary cosmopolitan discourses, postcolonial
criticism plays a prominent role by promoting a form of what Gurminder
K. Bhambra (2011) terms “provincialized cosmopolitanism” (314), which
acknowledges the corrective contribution of non-Western voices to the
cosmopolitan project. As Bruce Robbins notes in what he terms “actu-
ally existing cosmopolitanism,” the change of perspective raises awareness
of the development of various cosmopolitanisms. These are opposed to
a universalist understanding of cosmopolitanism as represented by Kant’s
ideal of a cosmopolitan viewpoint leading to perpetual peace or Martha
Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan ethics based on the individual’s allegiance to
“the worldwide community of human beings” (Nussbaum 1996, 4, qtd.
in Robbins 1998, 2). These new forms of cosmopolitanism, more attuned
to non-Western perspectives, are seminally articulated in Kwame Anthony
Appiah’s rooted cosmopolitanism and Homi K. Bhabha’s vernacular cos-
mopolitanism.1
Appiah’s rooted cosmopolitanism, which he also terms “cosmopolitan
patriotism,” does not deny the importance of national identity in the pro-
cess of individual self-identity formation, but stresses the need to acknowl-
edge the diversity that is inherent to any national culture. Against the
belief in a Herderian nation which is constructed on the basis of a citi-
zenry that shares a common, homogeneous culture, Appiah (1996) rede-
fines this type of nation, which he refers to by using Anderson’s more
recent coinage of the “imagined community” (184). Appiah re-imagines
the national community from his situated cosmopolitanism,2 namely from
a Ghanaian, postcolonial and multicultural vantage point which enables
him to see the unreality of homogeneous forms of national identity. This
situated or rooted cosmopolitanism is dependent on the development of
allegiance to a specific place (or places) through instilling in the individual
a sense of ethical responsibility to institutions. In this manner, individuals
may develop a sense of allegiance to different locales through acknowl-
edging the need to respect the institutions of the community in which
they live, which do not necessarily coincide with the place and commu-
nity in which they were born. The main contribution of this postcolonial
approach to cosmopolitanism is that it emphasises the need to acknowl-
edge diversity instead of obviating it through a Western-centred humanist
cosmopolitanism. As Appiah (1996) contends, “the humanist requires us
to put our differences aside; the cosmopolitan insists that sometimes it
is the differences we bring to the table that make it rewarding to inter-
act at all” (188). Thus, Appiah (2006) underscores the necessary diver-
sity that informs contemporary collective identities and proposes rooted
cosmopolitanism not as a solution, but as a form of inquiry to face the
challenges of redefining earlier homogenising constructs of national and
collective identity in the contemporary global context (xi).
In his essay “Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism,”
Homi K. Bhabha (1996) explicitly acknowledges the influence of Appiah’s
rooted cosmopolitanism in his articulation of what he terms a “vernacular
cosmopolitanism.” Both concepts share a concern with redefining inher-
ited discourses of cosmopolitanism which are predominantly Western-
centred by placing the emphasis on the crucial role of the local and dif-
ference. However, Bhabha’s vernacular cosmopolitanism, implicitly fol-
lowing from his earlier theoretical postcolonial articulations of collective
belonging in, for example, The Location of Culture (1994), places partic-
ular emphasis on the condition of marginality and its power to transform
dominant discourses of collective identity. Inspired by Gramsci’s “subal-
tern,” namely “minority groups whose presence was crucial to the self-
definition of the majority group” (Bhabha 1996, 204), Bhabha identi-
fies in what he has elsewhere described as “the victims of modernity”—
“refugees, peoples of the diaspora, and migrants and exiles” (Pollock et al.
2000, 582)—the power to “vernacularize,” which “is not simply to be in a
dialogic relation with the native of the domestic, but it is to be on the bor-
der, in between, introducing the global-cosmopolitan ‘action at a distance’
into the very grounds – now displaced – of the domestic” (1996, 202,
emphasis in the original). Thus, in vernacular cosmopolitanism, mobile
populations play a crucial role in transforming the collective through a
dialogue between the domestic and particular, on the one hand, with the
transnational and the global on the other; they become potential trans-
formative agents of collective identities in the contemporary global age.
Similar to other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences,
critical analyses of contemporary literature in English have been attracted
to the potentialities of cosmopolitanism studies, though very few of these
have engaged with the transformative aspect of a vernacular, rooted form

of cosmopolitanism. With her focus on contemporary American litera-
ture, Alexa Weik von Mossner’s Cosmopolitan Minds (2014) focuses on a
philosophical form of cosmopolitanism that believes in the development
of a form of cosmopolitan ethics which is based on the individual devel-
opment of an empathetic imagination which facilitates the identification
with other citizens of the world. In this sense, literature is regarded as
enjoying a privileged position for this task, in which empathetic imagina-
tion is characterised by “[its] rejection of parochialism and a search for
new and broader attachments, based on different communalities” (Weik
von Mossner 2014, 2). In the same vein, Fiona McCulloch’s Cosmopoli-
tanism in Contemporary British Fiction (2012) adheres to a type of cos-
mopolitan ethos inspired by Rosi Braidotti’s “philosophical nomadism”
(2008). In this sense, McCulloch (2012) believes in “the infinite cos-
mos, unchartered and without territorial borders” (3), and underscores
literature’s role, and particularly her selection of contemporary British
fictional texts, in articulating “an attainable utopian premise […] that
our common humanity can be revealed through love’s ability to build
bridges across territorial divides” (10). In contrast to this type of philo-
sophical cosmopolitanism, which rejects the possible situatedness of this
concept, Berthold Schoene’s The Cosmopolitan Novel (2009) is shaped by
an understanding of cosmopolitanism that “promotes a departure from
traditional internationalist perspectives while stressing the significance of
local cultures for the development of any meaningful and viable world-
communal future” (1). Thus, Schoene’s study is closer to the type of sit-
uated or actually existing cosmopolitanism, as defined by Bruce Robbins.
However, as McCulloch (2012) notes, arguably in an exceedingly critical
manner, Schoene’s study is excessively rooted in a specific British con-
text, to the point of identifying a type of British cosmopolitanism which
implicitly risks reproducing the homogenising tendency of national(ist)
discourses, as if this was merely another form of Britishness (8). In this
sense, Emily Johansen’s Cosmopolitanism and Place (2014), while focus-
ing on the relevance of place and situated forms of cosmopolitanism,
avoids a specifically geocultural identification of the cosmopolitan novel
with a single national entity by examining what she terms “territorial-
ized cosmopolitanism” in Anglophone literature (9). Johansen’s selection
of literary texts, however, is solely authored by migrant writers. This sug-
gests an implicit understanding that non-migrant writing is excluded from
the transformations of national literary systems effected by the mobility of
peoples in the context of “territorialized cosmopolitanism” and the focus

on how former constructs of national literary systems interrelated with
constructs of national identity are challenged by human mobility in the
contemporary context of globalisation.
Aim and Structure

In this context, this study examines how migration challenges established
definitions of national community, and underscores the multidirectional
and cross-referential sense of collective and individual identity as reflected
in the contemporary fiction of writers with migrant and non-migrant
backgrounds in Britain and Ireland. The choice of these two geopolitical
and cultural spaces to consider how fictions of migration contribute to
the transformation of national literary paradigms is particularly relevant,
given the centuries-old colonial and migrant relationship between these
two islands. Particularly since the late nineteenth-century Irish cultural
nationalism, constructs of Irish identity have often reposed on definitions
that attempted to distinguish a sense of place and cultural identity that was
distinct from the colonial British centre. Similarly, as Irish critic Declan
Kiberd (1995) has noted, a sense of “England” and Englishness has often
been constructed by having Ireland “pressed into service as a foil to set off
English virtues” (1), and thus define a purportedly cohesive English, or
British imperial, collective identity. This contrastive, dichotomic relation-
ship has been particularly evident since the 1990s with the dominance
of the postcolonial paradigm in Irish literary studies, as exemplified by
Kiberd’s seminal study Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern
Nation (1995). Such a paradigm has continued to inflect recent critical
studies of literature of Irish migration to Britain (Harte 2009; Herron
2012; Murray 2012). This trend has been maintained in various degrees
in these examples of critical studies of literature of Irish migration to
Britain, but also in the continued tradition of studying, in a frequently
unproblematised manner, British and Irish literature—rather than litera-
tures—as an inseparable tandem. Consequently, one of the main reasons
not to include novels of Irish migration to Britain in the present study has
been to counter the colonial and postcolonial framework that has deter-
mined not only cultural and socio-political relations between these two
geopolitical spaces, but also the manner in which their respective litera-
tures, particularly in the case of Irish literature, are studied. The selection
of writers, and in particular of the Irish writers, in this study responds to
a desire to suggest other approaches to the interrelated study of British

and Irish writing fostered by fictions of migration. Thus, this is the reason
why Colum McCann’s and Evelyn Conlon’s work has been selected for
this study, since their novels question traditional understandings of the
Irish diaspora, as a determinant factor in constructs of Irish national(ist)
identity that are dependent on postcolonial analyses of Irish history. With
these novels, both writers suggest the need to redefine and resituate Irish
writing in relation to Britain, but also beyond that binary relationship and
in a global context culturally and in literary terms. This is why “fictions of
migration” is a concept that facilitates this change. As I point out in my
chapter on McCann’s novel, this aim is not new, but finds links with a tra-
dition in Irish writing that aims to look beyond the Irish-British binary.
Also, by analysing “fictions of migration” in both Britain and Ireland,
I suggest that there are ways in which literature relating to Britain and
Ireland can be studied as sharing features that are not exclusive to their
specific national literary traditions but that equally suggest the need to
subvert traditional notions of national literature in a global context. Sim-
ilarly, from the British perspective, Rose Tremain’s The Colour serves as a
challenging reminder that the British Empire also had a British diaspora—
a term that is not widely used in relation to British outward migration
and which is regarded as “a moot question” (Richards 2005, 47)—that,
although nominally in a position of privilege and power in the colonies,
also comprised individuals, particularly amongst British migrants of the
lower social classes, who endured conditions and emotions that evoke
those of other past and present diasporas. This reflection on the interrela-
tionship between Britain and Ireland in the title of this study also informs
the overall selection of the authors and novels included in this study for
their ability to meaningfully epitomise its main aims and the changes in
literary articulations of collective national identities as manifested in con-
temporary fiction in Britain and Ireland.
The choice of Caryl Phillips to inaugurate this analysis aims to signal
the redefinition of the field of postcolonial literary studies under the influ-
ence of globalisation, and to highlight Paul Jay’s favoured viewpoint of
regarding postcolonialism as inextricably interrelated with globalisation,
in the socio-political as well as in the cultural and literary fields. In this
case, Phillips’s A Distant Shore (2003) and Foreigners (2007) are chosen
as liaising with his collection of essays A New World Order (2001) so as
to reflect upon the complex redefinition of national collective identities
through the transcultural and transnational exchanges enforced by con-

temporary migration and, specifically as suggested by A Distant Shore, by
the forced migration of refugees and asylum seekers. In the introduction
to his collection of essays A New World Order (2001), Caryl Phillips anal-
yses what he describes as the emergence of a “new world order” in the
twenty-first century, in which, according to Phillips, the identity conflicts
caused by an unfixed sense of “home” that have marked his life and cre-
ative work can be partially resolved. Phillips’s use of the vocabulary of
home and family as metaphors for the nation recurs in a number of his
fictional works, and these terms are also often used in traditional socio-
historical constructs of the nation as a community of individuals that share
the same “origin or descent” (Hobsbawm 1990, 15). As suggested in the
introduction to A New World Order, Phillips has struggled throughout his
life and writing career to expose the fallacy of these traditional constructs
of the nation, and does so by re-examining its metaphors in his fiction.
The aim of this chapter is to analyse how A Distant Shore (2003) and
Foreigners (2007) engage with this new order, characterised by the inex-
tricable interrelationship between postcolonialism and globalisation, so as
to reconstruct the metaphor of home as nation within this new context
from a cosmopolitan perspective.
Cosmopolitanism is also a theoretical framework that, as signalled ear-
lier in this introduction, particularly with its consideration from postcolo-
nial and sociological perspectives, contributes to the project of replac-
ing what Ulrich Beck (2006) terms methodological nationalism with
an increased awareness of the unavoidable cosmopolitanisation of real-
ity. This framework fruitfully contributes to re-examining the connec-
tion of Irish literary production beyond the postcolonial perspective that
has dominated the field until recently.3 In this sense, Colum McCann’s
work, in particular, Let the Great World Spin (2009), signifies the chal-
lenge to the dominance of such a postcolonial framework in Irish Studies
and stresses the transnational and transcultural influences that nurture his
work, as rooted in a tradition of Irish fiction that escapes the limitations
of politicised approaches to the study of Irish literature.
As distant as the work of Abdulrazak Gurnah may initially seem from
McCann’s, Gurnah’s deromanticised treatment of Indian Ocean cos-
mopolitanism also aims at countering, in line with Achille Mbembe’s
(2007) Afropolitanism, politicised approaches to African literature that,
particularly, from a pan-African ethos, had tended to reproduce the
homogenising tendencies and binary positions of the colonial discourse
that it aimed to disrupt. In both By the Sea (2001) and his more recent
Gravel Heart (2017), Gurnah does not eschew anti-colonial criticism,
characteristic of postcolonial writing. However, this is also combined with
a self-critical regard of the pan-African project, in novels that emphasise
the crucial role of transnational and transcultural exchanges often moti-
vated by forced migration in the redefinition of collective identities in
both former colonies and the former colonial centre.
As evinced in the first three chapters of this study, postcolonialism
has played an undeniable role in articulations of collective identity in
the British and Irish contexts, and migrant writers have historically had
a seminal, though not always duly acknowledged, place in the making of
the literary traditions in these geopolitical contexts. Globalisation, how-
ever, has not only provoked a re-examination of the role of postcolo-
nialism, but also of migration beyond postcolonial ties and in relation
to literature. Globalisation has thus emphasised the increased pace and
intensity of transnational and transcultural exchanges and the manner in
which these have complicated what Rebecca L. Walkowitz (2006) has
termed the “location of literature,” as depending “not only on the places
where books are written but also on the places where they are classified
and given social purpose” (527). In this sense, Elif Shafak, as a Turkish-
British writer, writing in both Turkish and English, challenges traditional
academic categorisations of national literature. The analysis of her novel
Honour (2012) shows the manner in which this text contributes both
thematically and aesthetically to challenging homogenising constructs of
national identity. Shafak’s novel exposes the complexities that are evened
out in nation-building processes that are dependent on the fallacy of the
Muslim migrant other, constructed as a consequence of the discourse of
fear that has been dominant since 9/11 and, in the British context, partic-
ularly since the 1990s. However, with its incorporation of narrative tech-
niques characteristic of Turkish oral tradition and the influence of Sufism,
particularly Western Sufism, on thematic and rhetorical choices, Shafak’s
novel serves as a reminder not only of the fact that “contemporary litera-
ture in an age of globalization [needs] to be read within several national
traditions” (Walkowitz 2006, 529), but that national literary traditions
are inescapably porous to and transformed by non-national influences.
The memory of such inevitable transnational currents in the making
of collective and individual identities is also brought to the fore by Rose
Tremain and Evelyn Conlon and the emphasis that their selected novels
place on the changing role of memory processes in identity formation
in a contemporary context that is crucially influenced by migration and

transcultural exchanges. Memory, as inextricably related to constructs of
national identity, is at the core of Maurice Halbwachs’s collective mem-
ory and Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire, which foster a binary logic in
articulations of collective identity. More recently, however, globalisation
and the rapid mobility of people and information across borders have
ensued a transcultural turn in the study of memory. In this sense, tran-
scultural memory is characterised as a retreat from monologic features of
national memory in order to emphasise the dialogic nature of memory
(Assmann 2013), in which the lieux de mémoire, often identified with a
specific national community, become “shared sites of memory” (Hebel
2008), characterised by cross-cultural experiences of these sites of mem-
ory and of the transnational historical events that they symbolise. In this
sense, transcultural memory, though often associated with migrant mem-
ories, also highlights the understanding that “cultural interactions are no
longer the [sole] sphere of migrants” (Butt 2015, 19). On this basis,
transcultural memory thus lends itself to being interpreted as a form of
imaginary transportations across national and cultural borders. This is also
the main aim of Michael Rothberg’s (2010) articulation of his noueds
de mémoire. Based on a critical engagement with Nora’s (1996) sem-
inal work, Rothberg (2010) understands these “knots of memory” as
“stimulat[ing] further conceptualization of collective or cultural mem-
ory beyond the framework of the imagined community of the nation-
state” (7). From this transcultural perspective, Rothberg (2010) contends
that “in all places and acts of memory are rhizomatic networks of tem-
porality and cultural reference that exceed attempts at territorialisation
(whether at the local or national level) and identitarian reduction” (7).
In this sense, Rothberg’s concept provides a fruitful framework to analyse
how Tremain’s The Colour (2003), set in the 1850s New Zealand gold
rush, and The Gustav Sonata (2016), mostly set in post-Second World
Switzerland, emphasise the knots of memory across national and historical
borders that inform a present British context that is inevitably informed
by past and present transnational phenomena associated with mobility
of people and memories. The same knottedness of memory serves Irish
writer Evelyn Conlon to undermine in Not the Same Sky (2013) the role
that memories of the Irish famine have played as lieux de mémoire in
national(ist) constructs of collective identity.
Focusing on a selection of representative fictional texts of contempo-
rary Britain and Ireland, this study offers an analysis of the changes in
national constructs of collective identity observed in contemporary Irish
and British fiction in a global context with a special focus on the influence
of mobility, regarded not just as human migration, but also as the migra-
tion of texts and literary influences (Walkowitz 2006), as one of the key
factors in such transformation. The examination of these representative
texts shows how the national community, as well as collective and individ-
ual identities, is re-imagined through the necessary interplay between the
local and the global. It can thus be contended that William Blake’s augury
to see the world in a grain of sand has purportedly found its material
realisation in the contemporary globalised and cosmopolitanised context
of transcultural exchanges fostered by intensified forms of transnational
mobility.
Notes
1. Other terms have been coined which relate closely to Appiah’s and
Bhabha’s understanding of cosmopolitanism, such as “discrepant cos-
mopolitanism” (Clifford 1998), “critical cosmopolitanism” (Mignolo 2002;
Delanty 2006, 2012) and “territorialised cosmopolitanism” (Johansen
2014), which emphasise the importance of distinguishing themselves from
earlier humanist and universalising tendencies of cosmopolitanism.
2. A tradition of postcolonial scholars has emphasised the need to analyse
cosmopolitanism in relation to “conditions of mutability” and “in terrains
of historic and cultural transition” (Pollock et al. 2000, 580). This has made
cosmopolitanism historically contingent and facilitated the understanding
that there is a wide range of cosmopolitanisms.
3. Referring to the work of Liam Kennedy (1993), Luke Gibbons (2013)
observes how in the period advancing towards the Celtic Tiger years, there
emerged voices that started to claim the need to liberate Ireland from
the shackles of the postcolonial approach to Irish Studies. Gibbons’s study
emphasises the significant return to the tropes of postcolonial Ireland as a
consequence of the financial crisis that in 2007 put an end to the mirage
of the economic bonanza of the Tiger years. Interestingly, though, in these
neo-postcolonial references, Britain is often replaced with EU and world
institutions, such as the European Central Bank or the International Mon-
etary Fund.
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CHAPTER 2
A Cosmopolitan Revision of the Postcolonial

“Home” in Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore
and Foreigners
In the introduction to his collection of essays A New World Order (2001),

Caryl Phillips takes his personal experience as a point of departure to
articulate what he describes as the change from an “old” to a “new
world order.” The former is characterised by transcultural relationships
marked by postcolonial processes, as exemplified by Phillips’s attachment
to his birthplace in the Caribbean, as well as his experience of discrimi-
nation growing up in Leeds. The “old order” is defined by the “labori-
ous certainties” (2001, 5) of a system, colonial or postcolonial, according
to which constructs of identity rest on binary and exclusionary opposi-
tions of self and other, belonging and unbelonging. As Phillips (2001)
observes, he has spent his life combating these fixities, upon which tradi-
tional conceptualisations of communal belonging are based, both in his
life and in his creative work. By “travelling furiously across borders and
boundaries” (5), he has attempted to explore and come to terms with
an unfixed sense of “home,” which he summarises with the statement “I
am of, and not of, this place” (1). As suggested in the aforementioned
introduction, this conflictual sense of home is at least partially resolved in
the new world of the twenty-first century, “a world in which it is impossi-
ble to resist the claims of the migrant, the asylum seeker, or the refugee”
(5). This “new world order,” in a global age marked by the rapid increase
in migratory movements, is perceived as resulting from the collapse of
the colonial and postcolonial models, with their respective focus on the
expansion of the nation-state and nation-building processes that exclude
© The Author(s) 2020 33

C. Zamorano Llena, Fictions of Migration in Contemporary Britain
and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41053-7_2
those individuals constructed as the Other. In this new context, national

borders become porous, and unstable identities in which “nobody will feel
fully at home” (5) become the rule rather than the exception. Although
Phillips’s use of the future tense suggests that this may be wishful think-
ing on his part, or a desirable project, rather than an accurate descrip-
tion of reality, in his introduction he implicitly points to three issues that
are crucial to recent analyses of the interplay between postcolonialism
and globalisation. These issues are: the effects of intercultural exchanges
on individual and collective identity constructs, the destabilisation of the
nation-state and the consequent re-examination of constructs of national
identity, home and belonging, the latter of which can be summarised in
the German concept of Heimat , broadly defined as an individual sense
of attachment to a specific geocultural unit through shared descent, tra-
ditions, and the implicit exclusion of ethnocultural differences.1 In the
light of Phillips’s claims regarding the emergence of a new world order in
the twenty-first century, the aim of this chapter is to analyse how A Dis-
tant Shore (2003) and Foreigners: Three English Lives (2007), two of his
literary texts2 produced in the present century and following the publica-
tion of the collection of essays A New World Order (2001), engage with
this new order, so as to re-construct the metaphor of home as nation
within this new context from a cosmopolitan perspective. For this pur-
pose, new cosmopolitan theory, which has developed as a critical response
to the effects of globalisation, will be applied to the analysis of Phillips’s
A Distant Shore (2003) and Foreigners (2007) in order to show that such
an approach—which attempts to contextualise the important relationship
between postcolonialism and globalisation evident in the introduction to
A New World Order—reveals aspects of his writing that remain obscured
when approached from a more traditional postcolonial framework.3
Cosmopolitan Approaches to the Fissures

and Fusions of Postcolonialism and Globalisation
The last two decades have witnessed a growing interest in the analysis
of the relationship between postcolonialism and globalisation. Whereas
in the mid-1990s postcolonial theory and globalisation studies still main-
tained their analyses of these historical processes separately (Hall 1996),
the last few years have seen a proliferation of studies, especially in
the fields of sociology, economics, anthropology and literary studies,4
which underscore the inextricable, though at times conflictual (During
2 A COSMOPOLITAN REVISION OF THE POSTCOLONIAL “HOME” … 35
1998), interrelationship between postcolonialism and globalisation. There

have been multifarious views expressed in relation to how these pro-
cesses interrelate. In recent times, the dominant argument embodies the
perspective that globalisation has mostly superseded postcolonialism
(During 2000) and that the latter experience is now simply one aspect
of the former, since both of them “celebrate and employ protean dif-
ference in the varied forms of hybridity, mobility and diversity” (Hardt
and Negri 2000, xv). The analysis in this chapter, however, aligns itself
with those who, like Clara Joseph and Janet Wilson in their collection
Global Fissures/Postcolonial Fusions (2006), suggest a dialogic coexistence
of postcolonialism and globalisation, in which interdependent views on
the role of the nation-state, transnational exchanges, and migration in
shaping contemporary identities interrelate and modify each other. As
Joseph and Wilson (2006) argue in their introduction,
Globalization is a deterritorializing force that ‘fissures’ the nation-state

because of the increased movements of migrant, exilic and diasporic groups
[…]. Postcolonialism ‘fuses’ in responding to the challenge of deterritori-
alization and, drawing on its colonial origins, acknowledging the contin-
ued importance of the nation-state and the ‘national imaginary’, even as it
interrogates principles and assumptions of national culturalism in demand-
ing increased recognition of ethnic difference. (xii)
Postcolonialism is perceived as a necessary force which keeps the univer-

salising tendencies of globalisation in check, and acts as a reminder of
the persistence of the power relations originally established by colonial-
ism, and which have been redefined in the present moment in the shape of
neocolonialism and globalisation, as new forms of transnational economic,
political and cultural interdependence have emerged (Lunga 2008, 194).
Arguments about the disintegration of the nation-state and the irrelevance
of the local under globalisation have already been countered within glob-
alisation studies, most significantly by Roland Robertson’s (1994) theory
of “glocalisation.” Postcolonialism contributes to this debate by arguing
for the relevance of the local and the need to preserve the import of the
“national imaginary,” and it additionally focuses on the importance of
redefining the national community by acknowledging the “other” within.
This stranger at home unsettles homogeneous constructs of the imag-
ined community by incorporating cross-cultural, transnational exchanges
which are, however, still plagued with the ailments of socio-cultural and
economic inequality. In the present context, local, rooted, or vernacu-

lar cosmopolitanism5 emerges as a conceptual framework that responds
to this characterisation of the nation-state and the Heimat as redefined
through the interrelationship of postcolonialism and globalisation.
Vernacular cosmopolitanism has most noticeably been articulated by
theorists in the field of postcolonial studies or with links to the postcolo-
nial world, such as Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006) and Homi Bhabha
(1996).6 This oxymoronic concept conjoins notions of local specificity
and transnational connections. As Pnina Werbner (2006) argues, this
“rootedness does not negate openness to cultural difference or the foster-
ing of a universalist civic consciousness and a sense of moral responsibility
beyond the local” (497). Contrary to traditional definitions of cosmopoli-
tanism as characteristic of a privileged elite and with a positive view of its
project, this new cosmopolitanism is characterised by an awareness of the
different forms of cosmopolitan realities that depend especially on the
migrant experience of underprivileged or, rather, marginalised subjects. It
also differs in the sense that the new cosmopolitans, with special focus
on refugees and economic migrants, are the protagonists of what Stuart
Hall (2006) terms “a globalization from below” (49), namely the actors
involved in a plausible transformation of the national imagined commu-
nity by imploding it from within, forcing it to recognise the transfor-
mative, generative presence of these legal or illegal “foreigners,” with-
out being oblivious to the social inequalities which are part and parcel of
globalisation.7 In this sense, as will be shown in this chapter, the work of
Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva on cosmopolitanism and their focus on
the transformative role of the “foreigner” in national communities gains
special significance when considered within the framework of local, ver-
nacular cosmopolitanism.8 This transformative potential of the “foreign-
er” in the specific context of the British national community is central to
the present analysis of Phillips’s Foreigners and A Distant Shore, and their
implicit re-examination of the British “home.”
The collapse of the purported stable foundations of the British Heimat
had already been analysed in 1977—well before the most recent pro-
cess of globalisation and the emergence of new cosmopolitanisms in the
1990s9 —by the Scottish theorist of nationalism Tom Nairn (2007) in his
seminal work apocalyptically entitled The Break-Up of Britain. The vol-
ume prophesied the dissolution of the construct of a united and “great”
Britain under the increasing pressures from Scottish, Welsh and Irish
nationalisms, and the claims for self-government that necessarily called
2 A COSMOPOLITAN REVISION OF THE POSTCOLONIAL “HOME” … 37
for the redefinition of the British nation-state and the sense of national
identity on which it was based. Noticeably, the role that immigration
played in the redefinition of Britishness was relegated to a much more sec-
ondary position. In his study, Nairn refers only briefly to the way in which
the English nationalism of the 1960s, epitomised by the Conservative
politician Enoch Powell,10 was based on an idealisation of the imperial
past, and on racist and anti-immigrant attitudes that turned the increas-
ing number of migrants from former colonies arriving in post-war Britain
into the new scapegoats for the country’s socio-economic failures.11
Over the last two decades the challenge to the nation-state that Nairn
analysed in the specific British case has gained centre stage, but today
it is migration flows rather than nationalism which are regarded as the
main factor in effecting the revised narrative of the nation in a globalised
context. As globalisation analysts contend, the phenomenon of migration
is not new, but what makes it different from previous migratory move-
ments is “the scale and complexity of movement [whose] consequences
have exceeded earlier predictions” (Papastergiadis 2000, 2). In the British
case, migration is identified in The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain: The
Parekh Report as one of the main factors that, since the 1970s, has had
a crucial role in “changing the face of Britain” (Weedon 2004, 31). In
October 2010, the Parekh Report publicised the findings of the research
carried out by the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain,
which was set up in 1998 by the Runnymede Trust, a think tank whose
main goal is to promote racial justice in Britain and to foster activities
conducive to “build[ing] a Britain in which all citizens and communities
feel valued […] and share a common sense of belonging” (Runnymede
Trust 2011). An analysis of the recent history of Britain, with migration,
devolution, and involvement in the process of globalisation and integra-
tion in Europe, led the Commission to conclude that “England, Scotland
and Wales are at a turning point in their history. They could become
narrow and inward-looking, with rifts between themselves and among
their regions and communities, or they could develop as a community of
citizens and communities” (Parekh 2000, xiii). In order to steer Britain
down the latter path, the Parekh Report suggested a number of measures
that emphasised the need to revise stable and homogeneous definitions of
national identity and to develop a course of action which would reduce
racism and encourage the growing acceptance of pluralism and full accep-
tance of diversity as defining terms of contemporary Britain.
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22.
Hogy Gábor és Lőrincz anyjukat a szobájába vezették, az egy

székre rogyott le s aztán a két fiúnak kezei közé temette arczát és
hevesen elkezdett sírni.
– Bocsánat fiaim, bocsánat – rebegte – hisz tán rosszul tettem…
De meg kellett neki egyszer, legalább még egyszer az életben
mondani.
Lőrincz kissé heves mozdulattal mutatta meg, hogy hisz ő is így
gondolkozik. Gábor nyugodt szóval, csendesen elkezdte csittítgatni.
– Hogyan, édes anyám, hisz így volt jó.
– Tudom mire gondolsz!
Úgyse kellett volna se nékem, se Lőrincznek az öreg pénze.
Megmondtuk volna mi is elébb-utóbb az igazságot néki s akkor csak
az lett volna vége, aztán meg…
– Szabad? – szólalt meg fejét az ajtón bedugva Poldi.
– Nikiről volt szó?
– Arról.
– Alapjában nem rossz vakand ez a mi Sardanapalus bátyánk…
de most – néni, no nézzen rám – mert nagy ügyben járulok
magához.
– Nos – mondta az öreg asszony, felvetve rá könnyező szemét.
– Azt akarnám megkérdeni a nénitől, hogy az esküvőre kitől
kérjek kölcsön frakkot, a néni vagy a Miczi komornyikjától… kitől
lenne illendőbb.
Egyszerre felengedt a hangulat, az öreg grófné mosolyogva
veregette meg a Poldi vállát, a két fiú felnevetett.
– No… no… ne nevessetek hát, ennek fele se tréfa. Nékem
nincs, pedig Miczi azt akarja, én is méltó legyek a… bécsiekhez.
– Na ha az öreg Hanz frakkját veszed fel, még beléd szeret a
Pepi herczegné. Mondta Gyallayné nevetve.
– Akkor azt veszem fel, mert Pepi igen «fesch» lehet, meg
unmittelbar herczegné, tud Yvette Guilbert dalokat, tudja gigerl-
marschot, Párisban tanulta a franczia kupléit… ez épp hozzám
pászol a frakkos Poldihoz.
S nagyot lendítve magán, kisuhant a szobából.
23.
Niffor grófné kissé lepihent, Gábor és Lőrincz visszatértek a

salonba. Itt már kis csoportokká oszoltak a családok. Niki négy
unokahúgától körülvéve, az erkélyen pipázott, a mint meglátta
Gábort, oda ment hozzá.
– Na spectabilis, nem veszük mi ázt hugom ásszonynák rossz
néven. Márfáy lány csák ő is… Azért tudom én, hogy te is Márfáy
vágy. Lesz rá gondom, hogy ne felejtsd el te se…
– Niki bácsi nem felejtette el máig se, hogy mama egy Nifforhoz
ment. Ma is csak azt látja benne.
– Mond inkább, hogy ő bennem á Márfáit, már rég áz
orrszárvukkál húz (ez a Nifforok czímere) – Á mi medvink úgy –
lánykák, nem kell neki… he he he – én ázért nem hárágszom. A Niki
bácsi nem rossz ember ám ázért… Ugy-e Lizinkó. És Lizinkó nem
mondott néki ellent.
Gábor az öreg herczegnéhez ment be, ez megcsókolta homlokát,
de hidegen, nem úgy, mint első látogatása alkalmával.
– Te Gábriel, nekem sok bajt okoztál. A két Zimmerzofe azóta,
hogy kiszidtad őket, nem mond fel többet. Nem a haszontalanok,
hanem minden boszúságukat magukba fojtják… Ez még rosszabb…
Már kedves Gábriel, te még nem vagy kanczellár, mint az öreg
Czobor Lipót volt. – Még ne légy oly nagyon határozott… no – azért
ne vedd rossz néven, én is ezt csak nevetve mondom… látod… én
még azt se tudom elhatározni, hogy a piros vagy a lila fejkötőt
tegyem-e fel a lakodalomra. Hidd el, a megfontolás ér csak valamit.
Te, (s aztán meglegyintette picziny zsebkendőjével Gábor arczát)
hogy tetszik néked ez az Erzsi? Oder Erzsébet, vagy hogy hivják –
ugyan na… Hisz, jó jó, te jól vagy velök, csinos is – de kissé
parasztos. Olyan… no nem tudnám Mária Antoinette corset-ben
Erzsét elképzelni. Na, persze, az anyja parasztlány volt. A ki elveszi,
annak a származékai nem járhatnak az udvarhoz… Csak Pesten. Az
a pesti udvar meg nem is udvar. Fogadom, ez a leány nem is tudna
bókot csinálni… Nézd Leonceau… ez 1820-ban volt a divatos bécsi
tánczmester, minket így tanított rá… s erre az öreg asszony felkelt a
kanapéról s mély bókot vágott Gábor előtt. Ezeknek a mai lányoknak
nem hajlik a derekuk. Pedig egy leány, a ki bókolni nem tud, az
nekem annyit ér – mondta tudós arczczal – mint egy olyan tábornok,
ki a kommandóját felejtette el. Ez az Erzsébet 82 éves korában,
tudom, nem lesz olyan rugékony, so a mordskerl, mint én vagyok… s
az öreg asszony nem nevetett, mikor ezt mondta, szörnyen komoly
arczot csinált. – Ehez faj kell… 67-szer keresztül szűrt fekete vér –
az enyém… a tiéd – ezeké itt mind. Gábriel – mondta hirtelen – te
néked is oda adnák a Juliet. No… ne szabadkozzál. Az igaz, hogy te
csak Herr von vagy. No, de mint Márfay előtte mész mind e sok friss
új grófocskáknak. Hisz nékünk történeti vér bugyog ereinkben,
Stibor, Tökölyi, Balassa, no aztán meg még Rozgonyi Cziczellétől is
származunk. C’est drôle cà, ez majd csak nem olyan, mintha az
ember az orleánsi szűz ivadéka lenne… ni-ni, milyen furcsa.
S az öreg asszony hangosan nevetve felugrott a merev
kanapéról s átszaladt picziny, igen picziny léptekkel a salonon, úgy,
hogy főkötőjének szallagai libegve, lobogva követték őt. Klienigsteint
kereste… s meglátva a dohányzóba, sietett hozzá, hogy e furcsa
felfedezést vele közölje. A csipősebb történetkékkel mindig az öreg
diplomatához fordult.
Gábor csendesen a másik salonba ment, bár mulattatta az öreg
herczegné beszédje s tán épp azért oda ment Erzsébethez.
– Hát hogy tetszik itt a világ? – kérdte Gábor, leülve Erzsébet
mellé egy kis kanapéra.
– A hegyek magasak Gábor, a pompa meg igen nagy.
Parasztlánynak nincs otthona a nagy palotában.
– És ki tetszik itt neked legjobban?
– Poldi, – mondta hirtelen Erzsébet – meg a te jóságos anyád, ki
úgy megmondogatta az elébb a Niki bácsinak az igazságot.
– Poldival jól vagy?
– Hisz minden esztendőben tölt nálunk pár hetet… Úgy jő mint a
hogy megy, váratlanul. Ő tanított meg festeni.
– Nem is tudtam, hogy festesz.
– Hát jól van, mondjuk, hogy ő tanított meg látni.
– A mi vidékünk persze néked nem tetszik?
– Nagyon nem. Barna, zöld… ez a két szin az uralkodó, ez nem
kolorit. S az éles körrajzú hegyek s a merev kivonalazott fenyőfák…
ez… nem rajz. Milyen más a mi pusztánk, százszor változatos, finom
színe… s a végtelenség fejünk felett s a végtelenség, míg a
szemünk lát.
– Szebb a puszta.
– Hát már te is pók-király, – csúszott közéjük Poldi óvatosan, mint
a gyík. S aztán leült Erzsébethez egészen közel, egy kis
tabourettere, egyik kezét ölébe tette s másikkal átölelte Erzsébet
karszékét és aztán, mint a kinek ez a rendes és megszokott helye,
nevetgélve beszélgetni kezdett Erzsébettel.
– Ti a pusztát dicséritek. Nem rossz ízlés. No mondd ezeknek a
jó embereknek itt ezt el. Például Miczinek. Mondd neki csak, hogy a
vidéke nem szép… hogy nem festői, hogy a levegője piszkos s
mégis éles, hogy nincs két szinnél több az egész tájképben, csak
zöld, zöld, zöld, meg barna. Hogy a fenyőfa a legocsmányabb fa, a
mit valaha a földre pottyantott az ur kegyelme… Hogy egy alföldi
tanya finom körvonalaiban, rejtelmes szineiben több a hangulat, mint
itt az egész brinzás vidéken… no menj… menj… mondd el ezt néki.
Ha még mindig Nagy Sándornak érzed magadat. Ugy-e nem mered?
Erzsébet egyenesen a Poldi szemébe nézve, nyugodtan
mosolygott. S az egyik kezével végig simította a Poldi érdes,
rettenetes hosszú karmú kezét.
– Öreg kutya, ne bátorítsd Gábort a rosszra. Rossz filantrop
vagy.
Gábort azonban épp Miczi intette magához a salon túlsó
sarkába.
– Te, Gábor, – mondta nyafogó hangon – ezt ugyan ügyesen
csináltad.
– Mit, Miczi?
– Magad nem akartál a hálóba pottyanni s miután már kellett,
hogy valakit megfogjon, Lőrinczet lökted oda magad helyett.
De erre Gábor már igazán megharagudott.
– Tán csak nem hiszed? – vágott szavába hangosan.
– Azt hiszem… a mit tudok. Nálam a hit s a tudás együtt jár, hát
miért és hogyan vetette volna Lolly különben Lőrinczre magát, mikor
addig ő is velünk tartott és segítette a Bálványossy alliance
felépitését. – Gábor a dühtől halványra vált arczszinnel, reszkető
ajakkal hagyta ott Miczit, nem is folytatva a méltatlan párbeszédet.
Utközben Niki bácsi és Lizinkó kapták meg a frakkja szárnyát, a mint
mellettök ellebegve szobája felé tartott.
– No, Gábriel… megfogádtád tánácsomát, okos fiú vágy. Méltóán
viseled á Márfáy nevet.
– Miben?
– No, bizony ne mokázz. Tudja azt itt mindenki. Ugy-e bácsi?
– Tudjá… tudom én, ti s á megye. Ezzel áz ujabb Klienigstein-
Niffor házássággál lefütyültünk á Nifforoknák, hi hi hi! Ez ögyes volt
tőled fiú.
– Hát ti is! ti is! – s Gábor már-már azt hitte, rászakad a ház.
– Hogyne, Gábor. Tudjuk, hogy a te érdemed. De erre már Gábor
nem is felelt, hanem ész nélkül rohant ki a salonból.
Tehát ide jutott! Mi lehet az oka? Istenem, ki segít rajta, ki
magyarázza meg, hogy miben rejlik a hiba. Benne… ezekben? Hogy
bármit is tegyen, bármit gondoljon, rosszra fordítják, rosszul
értelmezik ezek, a kik az ő húsából s az ő véréből valók.
24.
Másnap a vendégek érkeztek meg.

Miczi az izgatottságtól alig tudta, hová legyen. A lovak folyton
jártak a vasútra s egyik vonattól se jött vissza kevesebb mint 8–10
vendég s ugyanannyi cseléd. A kastély túl volt tömve. A folyosókon
szaladgáló komornák, a kertben tarka toilettek, az istállóban
toporzékoló vendéglovak. A kastély ormán ott lebegett a Nifforok ősi
zászlója, a lépcsőkön keleti szőnyegek csüggöttek, a salonok szinte
kábitóak voltak a virágillattól. Egész Bécs s Pozsony légyottot adott
az esküvőn. Megérkeztek a károsultak is (mint a hogy Poldi ártatlan
arczczal, de nagy malicziával elnevezte őket): a Bálványossy család.
A herczegné rossz kedvű volt. Nem szokta meg az álczáskodást s
bosszúját Miczin töltötte ki, a ki remegett s a jövő téli saisonra
gondolt. Hogy lesz majd Bécsben!… az öreg herczegné támogatása
nélkül. Vele jött Pepi herczegné is s Pepivel tíz nagy kuffer, két
komorna s két óriási dán dogg. Aztán Bálványossy Lajos,
Magyarország első partija, ki után csak úgy bomlottak a lányok. Meg
a gróf Belényesi pár, az örök harczban élő papa és mama, meg
világszép lányuk, Mini. Meg a felsőház kemény szónoka Ugróczi
Miklós báró a nejével, ki maga is politikai salont tartott, aztán Niffor
Gyula hires sporting like feleségével, ki legjobb lovas
Felsőmagyarországon s ki már néhány vaddisznót és medvét terített
le az utolsó vadászatok alkalmával. Meg a Bajmóczy pár, a szép, de
nagyon befestett s boldogtalan Bajmóczy Emmi, meg a férje. A ki
szereti s a kit ő szeret… de hát ki ismerné a szegény ember s ki a
gazdag ember útjait?
Az ebédnél hatvanan ültek, mind báliruhában s a legtöbb
asszony gyémántos hajjal, gyöngyös nyakkal.
Evés után vagy egy órai siésta volt a nagysalonban. Végre
kilenczkor felnyilt az ajtó s egy alabárdos, a XII. század
costümjében, jelentette, hogy a Caroussel elkezdődik.
Párbeszédek a salonban:
Bálványossyné Stazi nénihez. – Ez az első amit valaha hallok,
lakadalom előestéjén egy caroussel!
– Chère Leonie tu verras, a jövő században a lakodalom után
lesz s a vőlegény és menyasszony abroncsokon fognak együtt a
szertartás után átugrálni. A két öreg asszony hangosan nevetni
kezdett.
Niki bácsi a lánykákat oktatta. Most látjátok meg á turnier milyen
volt 300 év előtt. Ákkor még persze áz ember koronáját nem tette le
egy estére s nem csápott bohócz sapkát a fejébe… no de hát mi
áltmódisák vágyunk. Ti négyen és én, ezt nem értjük. Lizinkó
legislegjobb lesz á kriptát rendbe hozátni, holnáp kisöpörtetni… S a
bácsi élesen nevetett hozzá.
Egy bécsi kisasszony Gábortól azt kérdte, hogy igaz-e, hogy
eleven ökröt fognak a czirkusz közepén megnyúzni, a bécsi
societásban ezt úgy emlegették, mint ennek a magyar dáridónak a
legkimagaslóbb aktusát.
A társaság ezalatt különben nagy ünnepélyességgel átvonult a
kastélylyal egy oszlopos csarnokon át összeköttetésben levő
czirkuszba, a melyet az egyik Révényi fiú, ki nagy villany-«meister»,
villanyfénynyel rendezett be.
A hatalmas gömbölyű épület nappali fényben uszott. Padmalyát a
jelenlevő családok czímerei diszítették (Márfay is ott volt… de már
ismét újmódi koronával rajzoltatta ez a Niffor-nép – nem úgy a hogy
az adománylevelen van – jegyezte meg dühösen Niki bácsi). A
falakról pedig a megye városainak zászlai csüngtek le.
– Kissé heraldikus a hangulat – sugta Ádám Gábornak, kit
azonban még folyton elfoglalt mindaz, a mit ma délután néki
mondtak.
A lovarda felső erkélyén a gazdatisztek meg a városi polgárok
családjai foglaltak helyet, egy emelvényen, a melynek falát Niffor
sárga-kék csíkok fedték, a dánosi katona-zenekar Tinódi korabeli
jelmezben a Gotterhaltet játszotta. A társaság a nagy páholyban
foglalt helyet. Ott volt Schwarcz Dávid is, a főbérlő, a meghivottak
között.
– Schwarcz báró – mutatta be Gábornak Poldi.
– Még nem báró.
– Még nem? No majd… ugy-e, nemsokára cousine? – kérdte
Miczit, ki egyik kis ujját nyujtotta Schwarcznak s aztán a
herczegnéhez fordult.
Az istállóhoz vezető ajtó nyilásán állanak két sorban, úgy mint a
valódi czirkuszokban, a Niffor czímerébe öltözött lovászok.
Az első csengetésre egy Nudlbrett-es lovat hoztak be. Utána
szökdécselve Klienigstein Hanzi lebegett be egy halványlila selyem
trikótban. Pár karikát ugrott át, két bukfenczet vetett a lovon, s aztán
egy könnyed pirouettel kitánczolt a porondról.
A lelkesedés általános lett. Ennyit nem vártak tőle. Majd
Bálványossy Julie fekete lovaglóruhában, piros szegfűvel az
inggallérjában, ugrató iskolát lovagolt. A leány merész volt, ugrásai
nyaktörőek. Mind gyorsította a lépést, mind tüzelte a telivért. S
közbe-közbe élesen kiáltott fel magas hangján, mint egy féktelen
kedvű, már-már az ugratás hevétől megbomlott lovarnő. Édes anyja
Nikihez fordult.
– No, Márfay… mit szól a mai lányokhoz?
– Kikáposák, juckerek. Félnék tőlük. Azért ne higyje, hogy igáz, á
mit mondok. Gyönyörű lányá ván – grátulálok herczegné. Két kezét
csókolom.
Gábor az Erzsébet arczát figyelte, ki szintén a páholyban volt.
Érdekkel nézte mindegyik számot. Látszott arczán, hogy mulattatja
őt, az a mi ezeket már valószinűleg daczára a vele járó
veszedelemnek, fáradságnak, már egy cseppet se birta felizgatni.
Erzsébet örült a mulatságnak, pedig tudott az élet nyomoráról is.
Ezek már se szeretni, sem sírni nem tudnának. És úgy vette Gábor
észre, hogy önmaga sem… A mit látott, a miről tud, a mit ezek
tesznek, mind közönyösen hagyja.
Hát már ő benne sincs élet? Csak úgy, mint a többiekben? S úgy
érezte, Erzsébet a maga látszólagos impaszibilitásában él, míg ő az
ő minden parányi hatásra reagáló, folyton rezgésben levő,
gyógyszerész-mérleghez hasonló lelki szövetével tetszhalott.
Töprengéséből harsona hangja verte föl. A barsellieri mars
hangjánál Bálványossy Stapszi ugrált be a porondra.
Stapszi mint clown! Egész testét selyem rojtok fedték. Minden rojt
végén parányi csengő. Úgy, hogy minden mozdulatánál ruhája finom
csengetyűszerű hangot adott. Pedig folyton mozgott. Egy perczig
nem nyugodott sem a lába, sem a keze. Elébb végig bukfenczezte
az egész czirkuszt, majd tótágast állva, végig szaladt a porondon.
Aztán czigánykereket hányt, végül irtóztató nagy pirouette-el
beröpült a páholy dámái közé… kik ott aztán jól végig páholták
legyezőikkel a bolondos fiút.
De most következett a programm fénypontja. Lolly és Lőrincz
páros hajtó iskolája, mindegyik sötétszürke öltözetben, arany
gombokkal. Mindkettő telivér s telivért hajtott. Elébb végig lovagoltak
a czirkuszon. Ez alatt mindenki tapsolt s ők csak komolyan azt
nézték, hogy az alattuk levő mén hogy viseli magát. Aztán a zene
keringőt kezdett játszani s a lovak most a legcsodálatosabb
kanyarulatokkal kerülték ki egymást s a vőlegény minden
kanyarulatnál rá mosolygott menyasszonyára. A czirkuszból most
felülről virágok hulltak alá s a gyönyörű menyasszony és a lovon oly
férfias vőlegény alig látszott a virágtól. Lolly s Lőrincz ezután lovaikat
közel egymás mellé terelték, Lőrincz kivette Lolly kezéből a
gyeplőszárat és ő hajtotta Lolly lovát is, így egyszer végig ügetve a
czirkuszt, a nézők tapsai közt kilovagoltak.
– Mit gondol herczegné, ez áz életben is mindig így lesz? – kérdé
Niki bácsi.
– Hja, ha majd azt a Lolly is így akarja, akkor igen… és addig.
Az utolsó szám Pepi herczegné volt. Felülről egy pádimentumot
eresztettek le, épp a zenekar elé s a zenekar egy Xanrof-kuplé
kezdetét kezdte játszani. Ime a herczegné szakasztott, mint az
Yvette Guilbert. Símára fésült haj, síma selyem ruha, egyszerű
pántlikával a dereka körül és fekete keztyűk. Nyugodtan megáll a
pádimentum közepén, egyszerűen, szinte fiatal lányos arczczal,
eldalolja, hogy hogyan ment Nanon sétálni a mezőre. Aztán, hogy
találkozott Battiste-el. A mező illatos volt, s az ég kék… meg utána
még sok érdektelen dolgot dalolt el. Mindez olyan egyszerű, mind
olyan semmis. Igazán, a dalnak – semmi jelentősége. De hát minden
kuplé után egy trallalá következik el. S ez végre annyira «trallalá»
lett, hogy a jelenlevő fiatal lányokat a mamák kénytelenek lettek
kiküldeni – az istállóba. Ez volt a legbiztosabb menhely. S a dal
nagyon tetszett, s az egyet követte kettő-három. Egy bécsi indulót is
elnótázott a Gallmeyer Pepi repertoirejából.
S a zászlók csak nézték onnan felülről e modern képet. Ezt egy
Niffor vette el a töröktől, ezt Czobor Tamás a mohácsi vészből hozta
haza. Ez a czímer ott a Garáké… ezzel is rokonságban volt a három
család. Az a korona ott a csillár alatt – a vajda koronája – kié az
egész felső megye volt s a kinek mind a három család utódja. De hát
mindez fakult, kopott a villanyfény világánál. A porondra hullott
virágok, Gábor úgy érezte, a hervadás lehét árasztják. És Gábor
néz, néz, messze innen… ott arra lenn az Alföd… ott nincs zászló,
ott nincs czímer, de pusztulás sincs, meg romok. Ott jó lesz…
pihenni az ünnepélyek után.
25.
Az előadást követő tea alatt a bécsi kisasszonyok illetlenek voltak

Czobor Erzsébettel. Nem volt elég jó nekik, hisz parasztleány volt az
anyja. Julie, Boleslawa, Miczi és Mina magázták. Aztán meg félre
vonulva tőle, ott hagyták egyedül egy sarokban. Gábor figyelte a
jelenetet, de azért nem közeledett Erzsébethez. Várta, mit fog tenni.
Erzsébet nyugodtan felhúzta keztyűjét s felemelkedett székéről és
oda ment az egyik uradalmi tiszthez (ezek is be voltak rendelve az
estére) s leült mellé. Pár percz mulva pedig a zongorához ült s pár
akkordot kezdett játszani.
– Milyen okos, milyen okos… hallatszott minden oldalról.
Egész éjjel játszott s azok tánczoltak a zenéje mellett…
– Du bist halt eine liebe Kredl! – felejtette el magát az előbbi
bécsi comtessek közül az egyik.
– Anyám azt tanította, – mondta mosolyogva Erzsébet – hogy
útban soha se legyek, sőt toljam a mások szekerét, ha tehetem.
Parasztosan van mondva, de tán a grófnék megértik, szegény
anyám földmíves leánya volt, ő csak így tudta. Tőle sokat tanultam,
azért… ezt is. Ha majd a grófné imádkozni fog ma este – mondjon el
érte egy imát. Tudom… megkönnyebbülésére válik és én hálás
leszek érte.
És Erzsébet kezet nyújtott neki, a melyet a leány, ki alapjában jó
teremtés volt, hevesen megragadott s aztán könnyes szemmel
össze-vissza csókolta Erzsébet nyugodt, mindig derült arczát.
26.
Este, midőn már mindenki lefeküdt, Nifforné szokása ellenére

bejött Gáborhoz. Az még fenn volt, kinézett ablakán a holdvilágos
éjszakába.
– Fiam, jere – mondta az öreg asszony – jere menjünk át
Lőrinczhez. Ezt az estét töltsük együtt, még egyszer, hárman. S a
sötét nehéz bársony ruhába öltözött erős szívű nagyasszony ment
előre – gyenge szívű, beteglelkű fia követte. Lőrincz is fenn volt még.
Ágya szélén ült s fejét kezébe temetve gondolkozott.
– Átjöttünk hozzád, búcsúzni tőled fiam – mondta az öreg
asszony. S rátette kezét vállára. Lőrincz hevesen megragadta és
könnyeivel áztatta azt a jóságos kezet, a melynek csak áldásait
ismerte eddig és fogja ismerni mindig. Gábornak odanyujtotta
jobbját. Így maradtak csendben sokáig, keresve azt a szót, a mi ki
tudja fejezni azt, a mit mindegyik érez s keresve azt a szót, a mi
azért azt a másikat ne bántsa, ne sértse. Az öreg asszony szólalt
meg.
– Gábor, öcséd holnap házasodik meg. De azért tenéked vele
kell lenned mindig. Ne feledd, hogy egy hús, egy vér veled… ne
feledd, hogy tán majd még ezután szorul csak igazán reád… – Az
anya ajka kiejtette az igazságot, nem birt a szivével.
– Jöhetnek rosz napok, jöhetnek pusztító idők, midőn majd a
fiatalabbnak szüksége lesz öregebbjére. Ne hagyd el őtet Gábor –
ne hagyj el minket. Én már érzem az elmulás fagyos leheletét. Hisz
csak abban éltem, a mit szeretek s egy gyermekem már kirepült
szárnyaim alól, a másik meg… repül, mindig repül – és Isten tudja,
hol talál fészket. Ne hagyjátok el anyátokat, ne azt az anyaföldet, a
mely szült, táplált benneteket. Látod Lőrincz – s most feltárta az
ablakot, a melynek holdfényénél ide világlott a Niffor nemzetség ősi
temploma, az, a melynek kriptájában a vajda óta annyi Niffor és
annyi Nifforhoz ment Márfay leány van eltemetve… Látod, ott az a
templom vár téged fiam, ott lesz az esküvőd. Ott esküdtünk mi is
örök hűséget s őseid egymásnak századok óta… Ez a templom vár
engemet… ide temetnek el minket mind… mind. Nem tudom miért,
de most félek attól a templomtól… Pedig hányszor, de hányszor
találtam ott pihenést, megnyugvást a nehéz órákban. Fiaim
támogassatok…
S az öreg asszony, ki egyenes derékkal, emelt fővel ment át
annyi bajon, most, mintha összeroskadt volna. Egy székre rogyott és
kezeibe temette arczát.
A két fiú csak nézte, nézte őt, aztán némán, szó nélkül kezet
nyujtottak egymásnak, tekintetükkel némán megtették azt az
igéretet, a melyet az öreg asszony esdve kért tőlük.
És az öreg asszony felemelkedve ülőhelyéből, átfonta karjait két
fia nyakán s hosszú fátyolával leborította őket… szinte megvédte
őket a bajtól… az élettől. Aztán… szótlanul, némán mindegyik
szobájába vonult.
Most már mindegyik mosolygó arczczal, de azért összeszorult
szívvel – érezve, hogy az a mosoly nem igaz az ajkon, érezve, hogy
az a néma igéret sohasem lészen beváltva, hogy az a kézszorítás
nem jöhetett a szívből, hogy az az öreg asszony fejéről leomló
csipkefátyol ma már gyenge arra, hogy a két fiút a modern idők
pusztító szelétől megvédelmezze. Késő, késő, a fátyolt elrongyolja a
szél, a feudális templom romba dől, porrá omlik az oltár, a mely előtt
örök hűséget esküdtek, betemetve azt a sírboltot is, a melyben az
ősök feküsznek s a templom romjainak utolsó porszemét elkapja a
jövő idők szellője magával és sodorja, sodorja az enyészet
tengerébe…
27.
A várkastélytól a templomig piros karmazsin bársonyszőnyeg. A

szőnyeg két oldalán a Niffor színekbe öltözött huszárok,. kik
mereven, nagy, nagy baldachinokat tartanak, a melyekről hosszú
fonatban csügg le a narancsvirág, meg a myrtus. A templom
harangja szól, szól az orgona is, betölti az ünnepies színbe öltözött
mindenséget…
Legelől halad az öreg Vezekényi Stefi, piros ruhában, arany
ékszerrel. Kezében násznagyi pálcza. Utána lépdel a menyasszony,
abban a történeti emlékezetű fehér brokátruhában, a melyben
Thökölyi Magdolna a XVI. században egy Niffor neje lett. Fején a
Niffor gyémánt-diadém, a melynek ötvösmunkáját olasz mesterek
csinálták a XIV. században. Hat méter hosszú fátyolát s uszályát a
kis Niffor gyermekek viszik, apród ruhában. A menyasszony két
oldalán Bálványossy Stapszi és Márfay Gábor – Bálványossy
aranybrokátban, Márfay Gábor halványzöld és aranydíszben.
Majd a vőlegény fehér selyemben, két oldalán a két
nyoszolyólány: Czobor Erzsébet és Bálványossy Julia. Mindkettő
fehér brokát ruhában, fehér csipkeköténynyel, ezüst pártában.
Majd a nagyasszony következett. Talpig gyászban, fején sugárzó
koronaszerű diadém, a melynek fátyola hosszan huzódott utána, ő a
Klienigstein karjára támaszkodott, ki a kamarási díszben lépdelt.
Aztán Niffor Tomi vezeti az öreg herczegnét, ki nagy krinolinban,
hosszú Mária Terézia fürtjeivel, magasra fésült hajjal úgy néz ki,
mintha a XIV-ik Lajos udvarából szakadt volna ide. Aztán Pepi
herczegné Bálványossy Lajos karján, Bálványossyné Márfay Nikivel,
majd a nyoszolyólányok a XVI-ik század köntöseiben.
A nap végig szalad a sok skofiumon, az ezüst párták
megragyognak, a gyémántok fénye versenyt csillog a nappal. Az
ezer brokát szemkápráztató fényben pompázik, a tarkaruhás tót
parasztlányok ott tolonganak a baldachin két oldalán, ők a vendég
urak közül nem egyet közelebbről ismernek. A templom két oldalán
két herold mindegyik kezében zászló, az egyiken a Klienigstein,
másikon a Niffor czímer. A jegyesek előtt meghajlik a két diadalmi
jelvény, a templomban harsona szólal meg, a padok szélein díszben
álló hajdúk meghajtják a zászlóikat (ugyanazokat, a melyek tegnap a
lovarda padmalyát diszítették), az orgona búg, virágillattól nehéz a
lég. A templom balján magas székek, ide vonulnak a herczegnék s a
család főbbjei. Jobbján bíbortrónon a bíbornok, a család barátja
Bécsből. A templom közepén karmazsin bársonynyal díszített
imazsámolyon a vőlegény s a menyasszony. A vőlegény kardját
Márfay Gábor tartja s a menyasszony virágait Bálványossy Stapszi.
A mise ünnepélyes lassúsággal s hosszú czeremóniával
kezdődik el. A bibornok ornátust cserél, a tíz segédkező pap bókol,
hajlik, térdel… az orgona csak szól. Az énekkar dicséneket
hangoztat. A mennyasszony sápadt arczán az életnek semmi
nyoma. Mint egy gyönyörűséges szobor térdel ott az imazsámolyon.
A vőlegény mereven néz maga elé, tán imádkozik.
Aztán a misének is vége, gyűrűt is váltottak, az eskü is
elhangzott. A biboros beszél, mély hangja betölti a templomot. Mint a
harsonák, előbb ő is a multról beszél és igéri a jövőt. Aztán ennek is
vége. A fiatal pár végig megy a trónszékek előtt s Gábor úgy látja,
majd minden asszony sír. Az öreg herczegné, Bálványossyné, a
Pepi herczegné festett arcza szinte fényes a könnyektől, az ünnepelt
Bajmóczyné és még néhány férfi szemében is könny és a szegény
öreg Niki bácsi (ugyan mi férhetett szívéhez) úgy hörög, hogy egész
teste megrázkódik bele s a leánykák, a Lizinkó csuklik és a többi sír,
sír… s édes anyja, a mint a Lőrincz szemét megcsókolja, érzi, –
hogy a könyeik összefolynak… a vőlegény maga is zokog… És a
templomban arany, drágakő, bibor. Még a nap is aranyra váltja
sugarát, hogy most betör a magas csúcsives ablakon… végig szalad
a templom falain némán hallgatva álló – kőemlékeken. Ime, három
század Nifforjai ott a fal mellett, mind kőből faragva, nem tudva
elmondani az időről egyebet, mint hogy a vértet, a lándzsát, kardot
erős kézzel tartotta az, a kinek sisak volt a fején s a virágot – a
liliomot a fején párta. Néznek, néznek, kőszemeikkel, belébámulnak
az élő fénybe… e napsugaras, virágos, gyémántos, aranyos létbe.
Majd a násznép az oltár mögött a sekrestyébe indul. Keresztül
lépdel azon az óriási kőlapon, a melyre a Nifforok czimere van vésve
s a melyet csak minden ujabb temetésnél szoktak onnan elemelni. A
násznép átmegy rajta s viszi a menyasszonyt és a vőlegényt oda,
honnan csak új életre ébredve kezdhetik ujra a lételt.
Mindenki üdvözli őket, most már minden ajkon mosoly és
jóakarat. Most már csak a boldogság dala hangzik még onnan
felülről a kórusból is, honnan diadalmi induló harsog…
És Gábor szemei előtt egyszerre egy kis fehér parasztszoba
képe tünik fel, ott az ágyon egy öreg asszony fekszik halva, de
mosolylyal ajkán, s az ágy szélen egy fiatal leány fehér ruhában,
fehér virágokkal borítva be az átszellemült tetemét…
És a fiatal leány ajkain is mosoly…
Az ágy szélén egy fiatal leány fehér ruhában.
TARTALOM.
FUIMUS
Első könyv 5
Második könyv 191

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Fictions of Migration in Contemporary

Britain and Ireland 1st ed. Edition

Anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland, 1600–2000:

Secular Martyrdom in Britain and Ireland: From Peterloo

Fictions of the Press in Nineteenth-Century France 1st

Irish Urban Fictions 1st ed. Edition Maria Beville

Policing and Combating Terrorism in Northern Ireland

Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar

Northern Ireland, the BBC, and Censorship in Thatcher's

Class and Community in Provincial Ireland, 1851–1914

Carmen Zamorano Llena

ISBN 978-3-030-41052-0 ISBN 978-3-030-41053-7 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

Cover illustration: Buiten-Beeld/Alamy Stock Photo

Prof. Johan Schimanski for extending his invitation to be part of this

1 Introduction: Migration, Mobility and the Redefinition of

2 A Cosmopolitan Revision of the Postcolonial “Home” in

3 From Exilic to Mobile Identities: Colum McCann’s Let the

4 “Memories of Lost Things”: Narratives of Afropolitan

5 Against the Fear of Complexity: Ethical and Aesthetic

6 Solidarity Through the Bare Life of Migrants and “noeuds

7 “A Map of Bird Migration”: Redefinitions of National

8 Concluding Remarks: Timespace and Affective Networks

Carmen Zamorano Llena is Associate Professor of English at Dalarna

Introduction: Migration, Mobility

A Sense of Order Amidst

© The Author(s) 2020 1

These momentous, rapid transformations have revolutionised tradi-

Migration and Changes

studied and immigration received attention in terms of ‘assimilation’ to

it finds its roots. Therefore, comparative literature as a discipline was also

elimination of the national borders due to the threat of globalisation, a

Fictions of Migration in the Redefinition

The Role of National Differences

between different cultures and sense of in-betweenness, evolves in differ-

first approach, whereas globalisation is characterised as a postnational,

in the colonial centre, particularly of British writing produced since the

We do need to guard against making a fetish of hybridity and multicul-

The aim, therefore, in a globalised context characterised by transcultural,

nationalist constructs of the nation and the role of national literature

Kant’s definition of the term, which “presumes the necessary triumph

875). In this sense, cosmopolitanism is reproached as belying a certain

have engaged with the transformative aspect of a vernacular, rooted form

peoples in the context of “territorialized cosmopolitanism” and the focus

Aim and Structure

a desire to suggest other approaches to the interrelated study of British

through the transcultural and transnational exchanges enforced by con-

in a contemporary context that is crucially influenced by migration and

Annesley, James. 2006. Fictions of Globalization: Consumption, the Market and

Damrosch, David. 2003a. “Comparative Literature?” PMLA 118 (2): 326–330.

A Cosmopolitan Revision of the Postcolonial

In the introduction to his collection of essays A New World Order (2001),

© The Author(s) 2020 33

those individuals constructed as the Other. In this new context, national

Cosmopolitan Approaches to the Fissures

1998), interrelationship between postcolonialism and globalisation. There

Globalization is a deterritorializing force that ‘fissures’ the nation-state

Postcolonialism is perceived as a necessary force which keeps the univer-

economic inequality. In the present context, local, rooted, or vernacu-

Hogy Gábor és Lőrincz anyjukat a szobájába vezették, az egy

Niffor grófné kissé lepihent, Gábor és Lőrincz visszatértek a

Másnap a vendégek érkeztek meg.

Az előadást követő tea alatt a bécsi kisasszonyok illetlenek voltak