Language/Literature paper by Schwartz, Agatha
Melinda Nadj Abonji (Nagy Abonyi): Writing World Literature as a Swiss Vojvodina Hungarian (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Recipient of the Swiss Book Prize and the German Book Prize (2010) for her novel Fly Away Pigeon (Tauben fliegen auf; Galambok röppennek föl), Melinda Nadj Abonji has brought stories about Vojvodina Hungarians onto the Swiss-German and world literary scene. This novel is an autobiographical tale of the immigrant experience, told in the author's beautiful musical and poetical prose that fuses languages and cultures. My paper will focus on Nagy Abonyi's recent novel Schildkrötensoldat (2018; Tortoise Soldier; no English or Hungarian translation to date). I argue that this novel is a prime example of world literature in Homi Bhabha's sense, i.e. it can be read as a piece of postcolonial literature as it pertains to migrants, the displaced, and the marginalized. I read "Tortoise Soldier" as a multilingual postcolonial and worldly (Edward Said) narrative that brings to the cultural "centre" of German-language literature produced in Switzerland voices of a cultural minority from the European "periphery" to express the limits of language through the perspective of Zoltán Kertész, a marginalized and subaltern character. Faced with prejudice, racism and abuse since childhood, the stutterer Zoltán gets drafted along with other Vojvodina Hungarians into the brutal interethnic Yugoslav war. Nagy Abonyi's powerful narrative demonstrates its worldliness not only in how it remains connected to the hybrid cultural spaces of the author and the main character but also in the ways it carries a universal message as a postmodern anti-war novel through its criticism of the toxic impositions of murderous masculinity.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Agatha Schwartz holds a PhD in German (Queen's University) and is Professor of German and world literatures and cultures at the University of Ottawa. Her research areas are 19-21st century Central European literature and culture, women’s writing, and narratives of trauma. Her books were published by McGill-Queen's UP, the University of Ottawa Press, Ariadne Press, and Northwestern UP, among others. Her numerous articles appeared in academic journals such as Hungarian Cultural Studies, Hungarian Studies, Slavonica, Hungarian Studies Review, Seminar, German Studies Review, Journal of Austrian Studies, Oxford German Studies, and others.