(De-)Constructing (Self-)Identity through Transcultural Narratives: The Case of Katja Petrowskaja’s Maybe Esther

In my analysis, the main research question at stake will be the following: Can the phenomenon of transcultural literature in Europe help us redefine the pluricentric narrative of Soviet history? In particular, in my paper I will read and analyze the novel published in 2014 by the Kyiv-born German and Russian-language prose writer of Jewish origins Katja Petrowskaja (Ukrainian: Kateryna Myronivna Petrovs’ka – born in 1970 and moving to Germany at the dawn of the 2000s). In her work Maybe Esther, the writer creates a narrative of memory related to the Soviet past and creates a ‘counter-narrative’, which is textualized from her marginalized position and is directed to the “established national narrative that constitutes culture and cultural memory”.