“LIKE A STONE SITTING IN HIS MOUTH”

Forms of foreignness in Andrea Tompa’s novel

Abstract

It is no exaggeration to state that Andrea Tompa places the individual and collective experiences of otherness and foreignness at the center of all her novels. The many tensions arising from the coexistence of various ethnic groups, the historical and social situations and processes of minority existence, and the linguistic and cultural diversity are manifested in various structural, narrative, and linguistic forms in her texts. By examining various forms of foreignness and otherness, my study tries to show the common points, clusters of content and thought, questions (partly) better left undisclosed that intertwine her novels, and this can best be approached with the phenomena and set of concepts of transnationalism, multi- and transculturalism, hybrid language and trauma theories, starting from the Cluj – Carpathian Basin – Central Europe route and arriving at current global events.