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207936

"The citizen of a ruin"

David Williams

pp. 33-69

Abstract

without a firm roof over his head, his literary house (whatever that meant) has been destroyed, and with it his personal and literary biography. ... He is a representative of a world which no longer exists, a tragi-comic being, a tightrope-walker overburdened with mental baggage, the citizen of a ruin, an eternal exile, neither here nor there, homeless, stateless, a nostalgic, a zombie, a writer without readers, a travelling salesman selling goods either nibbled by moths or peppered by shells. ... He is a loser, a seller of souvenirs of a vanished epoch and vanished landscapes, an incompatible being, both despairing and deceiving at the same time, former, from every point of view.1

Publication details

Published in:

Williams David (2013) Writing postcommunism: towards a literature of the East European ruins. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 33-69

DOI: 10.1057/9781137330086_2

Full citation:

Williams David (2013) "The citizen of a ruin", In: Writing postcommunism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 33–69.