MINORITIES IN THE NOVEL FEJTŐL S LÁBTÓL: KETTŐ ORVOS ERDÉLYBEN [HEAD TO FEET: TWO DOCTORS IN TRANSYLVANIA]

Abstract

Andrea Tompa’s novel presents a multitude of existential, social, and cultural dimensions of minority-existence, as well as a wide scale of the possible answers and attitudes regarding minority existence as an ability and an (often restrictive) form of existence. In the following analysis, I focus on two categories of minority experience portrayed in the work. 1. A new approach to the situation of Transylvanian Hungarians’ forced to become a minority following World War I and the Treaty of Trianon, through which the work creates a valid counter-narrative against the falsifying Trianon rhetoric of official Hungarian memory policy and history. And 2. Presentation of the problems of emancipation, interconnected with feminism and questions of gender, the portrayal of which points out universal issues in the novel through the figure of the female protagonist.