The dialogic nature of dystopia in Alisa Ganieva's novel <i>The Mountain and The Wall</i>

Anni Lappela

doi:10.7557/13.4204

Forfattere

Anni Lappela University of Helsinki

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.4204

Emneord (Nøkkelord):

Caucasus, Dagestan, dystopia, utopia, postcolonial studies, post-Soviet space, Alisa Ganieva

Sammendrag

In this article I discuss and analyze the dystopian and utopian discourses in Alisa Ganieva’s novel The Mountain and the Wall (Prazdničnaya gora, 2012; English translation 2015). My particular interest lies in the connection between geographical imagination and postcolonial themes, as well as the relationship between gender and space. The chosen approach to Ganieva’s novel leaves out many other interesting topics, such as the role of Islam in the story, and questions about national and ethnical identity, but I will only elaborate upon them whenever they appear relevant to the outlined approach. My aim is not to label Ganieva’s work as a postcolonial novel, but to discuss the possibility to read it from a postcolonial point of view and to read a postcolonial thematic in it, among many other interesting themes.

Forfatterbiografi

Anni Lappela, University of Helsinki

PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki (Department of Modern Languages). She is currently researching urban experience and spatiality in Soviet and Post-Soviet literature, recently focusing on the fiction about the city of Murmansk.