Reconfiguring European history and cultural memory in Jamal Mahjoub’s Travelling with Djinns

Bibliographic Data

ID9002131
AuthorsYasemin Mohammad (The University of Iowa, USA, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume52
Issue2
Pages316-330
Publication date2015-08-05
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0021989415593402
OpenAlexW2512201332
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

This article focuses on British-Sudanese writer Jamal Mahjoub’s novel Travelling with Djinns (2003). I argue that the novel attempts to reconfigure European history and cultural memory through a transnational, exilic perspective by exploring the British-Sudanese protagonist Yasin Zahir and his son Leo’s road trip through contemporary Europe. Traveling enables Yasin to challenge official historical accounts, and envision cultural memory as fluid and dynamic. Not only does he conjure up forgotten memories of European migrants, minorities, and exiles, but he also interlinks these memories so that new solidarities can be formed across lines of ethno-cultural and/or religious division. The novel implies that only by reconfiguring the past and working through their traumatic memories can culturally hybrid individuals such as Yasin defy essentialist notions of European identity and develop a new sense of belonging

Aesthetics · Art · Cultural identity · Cultural memory · Essentialism · Historical memory · Identity (music · Perspective (graphical · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Central European Literary Studies · Gender Studies · History · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

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