Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige1 363 Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 1 Karolina May-Chu University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Abstract: This contribution engages the analytical frameworks of transnational German Studies, European literature, and world literature to provide a close reading of Abbas Khider’s novel Ohrfeige (2016, Engl� A Slap in the Face, 2018) as a simultaneously German, European, and global novel� The essay argues that migration narratives and especially narratives of refuge cannot be contained within one single geographical, national, or linguistic category and therefore require an entangled analytical approach� Written from the simultaneous insider-outsider perspective of an asylum seeker, Ohrfeige offers a powerful critique of Germany and Europe’s bureaucratic and social practices of exclusion� The analysis of the novel focuses on questions of mobility, language, and the body, and it demonstrates how Khider challenges and transgresses various types of borders and creates a complex and often blurred map in which personal and global histories of displacement intertwine� With its insistence on global connectedness, the novel also contributes to the growing “worldliness” of German literature� Keywords: transnational German literature, European literature, world literature, Abbas Khider, narratives of refuge In 2015, close to 900,000 asylum seekers arrived in Germany (“Pressemitteilung”)� This large number has challenged German political and social structures and revitalized discussions about how Germans view themselves as members of a national, European, and global community� Debates between those who embrace or reject a German “Willkommenskultur” became especially heated leading up to the German federal elections in 2017, and they continue to have an impact on Germany’s changing political landscape (Taberner, “Rethinking Solidarity” 819—22)� The political and social developments have also intensified 364 Karolina May-Chu an already existing interest in fictional accounts of migration and refuge� 2 And while forced migrations during and as a result of the Second World War have been a topic of literary exploration for some time, contemporary German literature has also turned to forced migrations from beyond Europe’s borders� Many works from the past decade resonate with current events, even as they predate the so-called “refugee crisis” and look back upon earlier periods, especially the 1990s and early 2000s� In these narratives of refuge, i�e�, narratives that focus on flight and the problems of arrival, 3 authors with or without personal refugee experiences engage with the global dimensions of seemingly distant wars and conflicts within a German setting� Their works highlight the urgency of understanding people seeking refuge as part of the fabric of contemporary German society rather than as something that can be externalized or relegated to the past� For example, Das dunkle Schiff (2008) by Sherko Fatah details an Iraqi Kurd’s flight to Europe and finally to Berlin; Maxi Obexer’s Wenn gefährliche Hunde lachen (2011) tells of a Nigerian woman’s painful journey to Europe; Shida Bazyar’s Nachts ist es leise in Teheran (2016) is the story of an Iranian family who fled to Germany in the 1980s; Senthuran Varatharajah’s Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen (2016) unfolds as a Facebook dialogue between two university students who have fled to Germany from the war-torn regions of Sri Lanka and Kosovo� These and similar works counter the abstract and often polemical discussions in the media or in the political arena and highlight the stories of those whose own voices have been “generally talked over or misrepresented” (Taberner, “Rethinking Solidarity” 822)� And while these texts attest to the diversity of the German experience, they also address larger European and global contexts, such as war and conflict or the political and economic conditions of migration� Ohrfeige (2016; Engl� A Slap in the Face, 2018) by Iraqi-German author Abbas Khider is such a simultaneously German, European, and global novel� Set in Germany in 2004, it tells the story of Karim Mensy, a young Iraqi, who ostensibly kidnaps a German bureaucrat after his asylum status has been revoked� Ohrfeige is Khider’s fourth novel, and the first to be published with the major publishing house Hanser� The hardcover version spent an impressive eleven weeks on the Spiegel-Bestsellerliste for fiction, a sales-based top fifty ranking that is compiled weekly for the book trade in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland� By comparison, Jenny Erpenbeck’s much discussed novel of refuge Gehen, ging, gegangen (2017) spent only one week on the same list, and none of the works mentioned above made the ranking (“buchreport”)� Judging by this relative popularity and media attention, Ohrfeige resonated with readers and can be considered part of a broader discussion on the treatment of refugees in Germany and Europe� Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 365 Khider himself participates in this discourse in several ways because his fictional accounts are also informed by personal experiences (Tabassi 128—29)� Born in Baghdad in 1973, Khider fled Iraq in 1996 due to political persecution� For four years, he moved through several countries in the Middle East and Europe without papers until he was arrested in Germany and requested asylum there in 2000� He became a German citizen in 2007� Khider studied German literature and philosophy and is a critically acclaimed writer� Notably, he is a double recipient of the Adalbert von Chamisso Prize, which was awarded between 1985 and 2017 to recognize authors who write in German but for whom it is not their first language� Perhaps because of Khider’s compelling personal story, most reviewers have read Ohrfeige through the biographical lens rather than assessing it on its literary merits (Pokrywka 424)� Yet, scholars have shown that there are many noteworthy access points to the novel (e�g�, Schramm, Tafazoli, von Maltzan)� In this contribution, I focus on the narrative construction of Germany, Europe, and the world from a simultaneous insider-outsider perspective� Ohrfeige weaves multiple geographical, political, and cultural contexts into a complex narrative that destabilizes fixed and spatially limited understandings of belonging� Karim, the main protagonist and first-person narrator, is suspended geographically between Germany, Europe, and the Middle East; psychologically and temporally between the real world, memories, and hallucinations; and physically between a male and a female body� While literature provides some orientation for him, language and the process of narration also become symbols of his dislocation and isolation� Looking closely at how the novel discusses questions of (im)mobility, language, and the body, I propose that narratives of refuge create fluid and global landscapes that are informed by the accelerated movement of people and ideas across the globe� In this constellation, the inherently intersectional figure of “the refugee” demonstrates that belonging is always a matter of contestation� Ohrfeige creates a world map for the reader, but due to the narrator’s multiple temporal and spatial displacements, it is a map with ambiguous borders and blurred boundaries� In surveying the novel’s mental and political landscape, this essay follows two lines of inquiry� First, it explores how the analytical frameworks of transnational German Studies, European literature, and world literature might facilitate a productive engagement with a work such as Ohrfeige� Second, it examines how Khider accomplishes the blurring of boundaries by offering a close reading of Ohrfeige that highlights its simultaneously localized and delocalized perspectives� These perspectives result from the main protagonist’s situation: Physically, he is in Germany (and thus Europe) and tries to interact with its people and institutions� In every other sense, however, he remains an outsider - due to his legal situation, the impermeable bureaucratic structures, and the systemic rac- 366 Karolina May-Chu ism that exclude him from equal participation in society but also due to personal trauma that amplifies his isolation� One of the guiding questions of this special issue is what it means to practice critical European Studies within the framework of a national literature� Arguably, it entails the questioning of categories such as “German” or “European” and the activation of modes of thinking that decenter and critique their essentialist foundations (e�g�, Halle; see also note 7)� Such a practice emphasizes other, ever multiplying and intersecting attachments and affiliations, which are often expressed in contemporary literature� In this contribution, I specifically draw on a transnational approach to German Studies, and I explore the points of contact between current conceptions of German, European, and world literature to inform my analysis of the novel� Such a combined approach fits within the larger context of a literary history as entangled history - a “Literaturgeschichte als Verflechtungsgeschichte,” as proposed by Annette Werberger� Among other things, an entangled literary history considers transnational connections and multidirectional global transfers in human history and applies multiple perspectives in examining their textual representations� Transnational German Studies, European Studies, and world literature offer different viewpoints on literature as a product of mutual influences and connections across borders, but no perspective is ever detached from its location (e�g�, Baumbach 55, Damrosch 27)� Acknowledging the ideological inflections of these particular access points is crucial, but an entangled view also underscores how they can challenge and enhance one another in the interpretation of literary works� Already since the 1980s and especially since the beginning of this century, an increasing number of German Studies scholars have stressed that German society and culture are shaped by globalization processes, which have only accelerated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (e�g�, Biendarra, Taberner German Literature)� The continuing engagement with a global and transnational reality generates important discussions of what is “German” and what constitutes “German” literature� 4 As a result, and as the title of a special topic edition of the journal TRANSIT in 2011 suggests, many scholars have been staging “cosmopolitical and transnational interventions in German Studies” and are exploring how “precincts of the disciplinary rubric ‘German Studies’ can be blurred, diffused and expanded within and beyond the boundaries of Europe” (Mani and Segelcke)� Narratives of refuge map fluid landscapes that necessitate such open and flexible approaches� Khider’s work, for example, is written in the German language and draws on his experiences in Germany, and it is thereby decidedly part of German literature� At the same time, it also reaches far beyond Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 367 the German context and challenges the reader to consider the permeability of boundaries between Germany, Europe, and the world� Transnational approaches to German (literary) studies aim to decenter and complicate the idea of the nation in the interpretation of cultural expressions within the German-speaking world� By contrast, current conceptualizations of European literature and world literature come from a comparative impulse, but, like transnational German Studies, they focus on texts and authors within the context of the circulation of people, ideas, and material objects beyond borders� Yet, what and where these ideational and political borders are is a matter of debate, and Europe today is widely regarded as an ongoing project; a dynamic constellation of variously defined affiliations and multidirectional processes - from the local through the transnational (e�g�, Halle 4—5, Wetenkamp 7—20)� European literature is part of this process, and in the introduction to his History of European Literature, Walter Cohen emphasizes this connection to the global, arguing that “European literature emerges from world literature and, in our own time, returns to it” (1)� Similarly, Karol Sauerland notes that in the twentieth century the notion of a more recent (“neuere”) European literature was displaced by the idea of world literature (173)� However, European literature does not simply disappear into world literature� Understood as literature set in Europe or addressing European themes and principles, European literature also plays a role in Europeanization and the imagination of a shared European culture� Sibylle Baumbach highlights the deep connections between world literature and European literature (57—58), but she also defines a “new cosmopolitan European literature” as a distinct yet open and flexible literary formation that can aid in “the promotion of a new European identity” (57)� This kind of critical cosmopolitanism is also present in what Lena Wetenkamp identifies as “Poetik des Europäischen,” a thematic and formal orientation that addresses for example fluid geographies and identities, borders and exclusions, or memory and history, and through which literature participates in the discursive construction of Europe (339—44)� Importantly, such a European literature offers a “(Gegen-)Diskurs,” i�e�, a critical counter-perspective on political developments in Europe (9)� As the definition of a European identity depends as much on self-critical input from the inside as it does on external perspectives (e�g�, Wetenkamp 16, Baumbach 59—60), migration literature in general, and narratives of refuge in particular, should be considered crucial to (re)defining European literature and to the discussions of what “Europe” means in the first place� Works like Ohrfeige draw attention to the shortcomings of a political and cultural notion of Europe that promotes inclusivity but actually enforces exclusions� The figure of the refugee, who is simultaneously inside and 368 Karolina May-Chu outside, exposes the limits of European cosmopolitanism and the inaccessibility of “Fortress Europe�” Current conceptualizations of European literature and world literature share a concern for how works from various languages and (national) contexts circulate and communicate with each other� While European literature logically retains its focus on Europe, world literature today is more global in scope, and it represents a wide array of definitions, theories, and approaches� 5 Most relevant in the context of this contribution are notions of world literature that center on questions of production, circulation, and reception� David Damrosch has famously defined world literature as a “mode of circulation and of reading” (5) that places a work “beyond its linguistic and cultural point of origin” (6)� This mode applies to how Ohrfeige itself travels globally through translations, 6 but as my reading will show, the transcendence of people and texts beyond single localities and languages is also a practice within the text� Furthermore, my reading applies and complicates points made by comparative literature scholar Corina Stan, who suggests that world literature today is shaped by global catastrophes and is therefore “a crisis mode of cultural production” (285)� Focusing on questions of mobility, language, and the body, I propose that the narrator’s permanent state of crisis produces the simultaneously localized and delocalized perspective that shapes the storyworld and the discursive construction of Germany and Europe� Khider’s Ohrfeige begins in 2004, sometime after Karim Mensy’s asylum status has been revoked� Karim’s situation corresponds to the reality of many Iraqi asylum seekers in Germany at the time� After Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled in spring 2003, the German government no longer considered Iraq a place of extreme danger and withdrew previously granted asylum requests� By the end of 2006 this policy affected about 18,000 Iraqis, even though Iraq continued to be unsafe, according to organizations such as the UNHCR (Schnellbach)� In the novel, Karim refutes the safety claims of the German government, noting sarcastically: “Die deutschen Behörden können mich genauso gut hier vor Ort erschießen, dann muss ich wenigstens nicht warten, bis ich beim Einkaufen von einer Bombe zerfetzt werde” (Ohrfeige 32)� Karim thus plans to leave Germany before the authorities can deport him and enlists the services of a human trafficker� The novel presumably begins with Karim’s last visit to Niederhofen near Munich, where he intends to say good-bye to Frau Schulz, his case manager at the “Ausländerbehörde,” the foreigners’ registration office� In the first pages, the reader is led to believe that Karim kidnaps Frau Schulz, ties her to a chair, tapes her mouth shut, slaps her in the face (the ostensible Ohrfeige), and forces her to listen� This confrontation functions as a catalyst for Karim to tell the story Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 369 of his life in Iraq and his flight to Europe� His monologue is interspersed with four italicized sequences in which he is inside an apartment, smoking, watching TV, and remembering things� While the reader may conclude early on that the kidnapping is a figment of Karim’s imagination, only the last italicized sequence confirms that he was experiencing drug-induced hallucinations and has in fact been inside the apartment the entire time, waiting to leave Germany� Corina Stan discusses two of Khider’s earlier novels within the frameworks of transnational German Studies and world literature� Two of her observations are especially relevant for my analysis, albeit they play out very differently in Ohrfeige� First, Stan argues that Khider’s novels are evidence of world literature’s “crisis mode” (285) because they demonstrate the “failure of the cosmopolitan ideal” (288)� This failure is due to cataclysmic events, which appear to foreclose any possibility for fundamental change� Second, despite this failure, the characters in Khider’s novels are still able to act on their moral principles by “amending” the world positively in subtle ways, such as deliberate acts of mistranslation (297)� By upholding the cosmopolitan ethic in a different form, they embody an “ideal figure of humanity to come” (299)� Most importantly here, this figure is “both present and detached from a place, but not indifferent,” which Stan reads as a form of distancing that can create a better bond with the world (299)� Stan’s argument is focused primarily on the (intended) effect of such stories on the reader, and she defines world literature as a mode of writing and of “worlding,” i�e�, of “shaping the reader’s world” (296) by expanding their horizon� Here she draws on Pheng Cheah for whom worlding is a cosmopolitan gesture that raises awareness of human interconnectedness (Stan 296—97)� My analysis shifts the main focus to the storyworld itself, and I ask how the narrator’s sense of crisis permeates his imaginative construction of Germany and Europe� I propose that any worlding potential is conspicuously absent within Ohrfeige because to Karim, the world is not amendable� Khider expresses this bleak outlook for example by establishing a tension between locality and delocalized modes of existence, which highlight not Karim’s bonding but a fundamental break with the physical spaces he occupies� Put differently, even though the novel has a very precise geography, these places have no meaning for Karim, who is hiding in his apartment, engaged in a monologue, and unable to stay or leave� A closer look at the novel will elucidate these points� Karim, the first-person narrator and main protagonist, offers a double vision of Germany and Europe that is enabled by his simultaneous insider and outsider perspectives� This contradictory position derives from the precarious situation in which refugees and asylum seekers find themselves legally, socially, and psychologically when they enter Europe� On the one hand, Europe and Germany 370 Karolina May-Chu are desired places that exist on a map and can be reached physically, even if the journey is risky and often deadly� Karim has made it to Germany, to the inside, and he gradually works his way through German bureaucratic institutions, meets German people, and moves through very specific and real geographic locations that provide orientation for the reader (Schramm 71)� On the other hand, these places gradually lose their specificity for Karim as he experiences them as inaccessible and transitory; they are hostile spaces, i�e�, spaces of policing, exclusion, and loneliness� In addition, Karim’s arrival in Germany is purely circumstantial as he was actually on his way to France when he was arrested in late 2000� He declared to the authorities that Germany was the first EU country he entered, which then became the default place of his asylum claim (a reference to the 1997 Dublin I Regulation)� This loss of specificity is also evident in the fact that Karim tends to use “Germany” and “Europe” interchangeably, and he does not distinguish between Europe and the European Union� For example, as he steps outside his barracks in Bayreuth, he notes the “boshafte europäische Eiseskälte” (Ohrfeige 62)� Europe and Germany are synonyms that describe a place that is not Iraq, a place that is supposed to be safe and a new home� As his hope vanishes and is replaced by feelings of speechlessness and exclusion, these locations are stripped of their meaning and are unsuitable for attachment - they are mean and cold, much like the European air may seem to new arrivals� A sharp critique of Germany’s (and by extension Europe’s) exclusionary practices is present throughout the novel, and it becomes clear that, to rephrase Stan, Europe’s cosmopolitan ideal has failed Karim and others like him� Karim’s map is not only amorphous, it is also blurred, as the following exchange with a German official who is directing him to his new housing illustrates: “Mein nächstes Ziel klang wie die libanesische Hauptstadt� ‘To Beirut? ’ fragte ich den schweigsamen Beamten, der mich bis zur Bushaltestelle begleitete� ‘Yes, Bayreuth� Das ist nicht weit’” (57)� Beirut and Bayreuth are homophones to Karim, and they also represent two different times and corresponding geographies in his life� Bayreuth itself embodies the Germanness from which Karim is excluded� With its annual and world-renowned Wagner festival that was appropriated by the Nazis, it continues to exemplify German high culture today; it is also a quaint, quintessentially Bavarian town� In the Beirut-Bayreuth confusion a map that is familiar to Karim merges with the new surroundings to produce a global, yet highly personal mental map in which locations are mobile and borders are fluid� This map includes people and events, it is both spatial and temporal, and it overlays, and in many ways overshadows, German and European mappings� Inscribed on this map are memories of his childhood and youth in Iraq� It includes the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 371 - a global event that occurs shortly after Karim’s asylum request is approved and after which he is seen as a potential terrorist and is unable to find a job (162, 164—71)� When the Iraq War ends in 2003, Karim’s asylum status is revoked� The map also contains a worldwide network of human traffickers, as well as those who circulate money or communication across the globe and arrange for illegal employment or marriages� Ohrfeige thus features multiple entanglements of European and extra-European histories, as German Studies scholar Hamid Tafazoli also notes (238)� World literature also figures into this complex geography, for example when Karim explains power dynamics in terms of Greek mythology (Ohrfeige 11), when he recalls the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales, Alice in Wonderland, or Homer’s Odyssey from his childhood, or when he finds consolation in an Arabic comic series (89)� It is also connected to places in Germany, such as the so-called Goethe Mosque (21) and a cultural center that reminds him of the Scheherazade cinema in Bagdad (21)� Even though the memory of these texts provides Karim with some orientation in the world, it cannot mitigate the fact that Germany and Europe are neither welcoming nor safe for him� In fact, Karim’s experiences with the asylum proceedings and daily racism show that even those who arrive in Europe physically frequently find themselves in situations that attest to its essential inaccessibility� Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber call such hostile sites “spaces of non-arrival�” In reference to films that focus on the journey of refugees, these places generate “stories of non-arrival” that “depict containment and incarceration on the way toward Europe as well as stasis, immobility, and the threat of deportation within Europe” (77, emphasis in original)� Such spaces include “make-shift hotels, container homes, camps, offices, and lines,” but Stehle and Weber also emphasize that “Europe itself is a space of non-arrival for people who receive only temporary residency or who are perpetually excluded from entrance or confined to refugee spaces” (77)� Karim experiences this non-arrival when navigating Europe’s legal and political borders and when encountering its social, cultural, linguistic, and racial boundaries� The novel also includes a number of other characters who hope for a better life in Europe but instead find themselves moving through or waiting in transitory spaces that lack safety and security� Their stories intersect with Karim’s, at times creating “intimate connections and encounters that are possible in spite of European border regimes” (Stehle and Weber 77)� While such connections offer moments of agency, solidarity, and humanity, they also “[highlight] the precarious conditions in which refugees live” (76)� 7 Karim finds temporary comfort in these contacts, but in the end, they only emphasize his loneliness� Due to these “precarious intimacies” (Stehle and Weber) as well as the novel’s 372 Karolina May-Chu blurred and amorphous global geography, I also read these spaces of non-arrival as delocalized, i�e�, non-descript spaces of waiting that do not foster permanent attachments� When Karim asks Frau Schulz: “Was bedeutet es für mich, wenn ich weder in der Heimat noch in der Fremde leben darf? ” (Ohrfeige 19), it reveals the essence of Karim’s complete dislocation and non-arrival� There is a striking disconnect between Germany or Europe as places that can be localized on a map and places at which one can actually arrive� Ohrfeige shows how the regulation of mobility and movement shape a refugee’s experience of Germany and Europe as hostile spaces� Karim experiences Munich as a prison, and all its inhabitants as guards (28—29)� He is constantly afraid of being stopped or harassed by the police, and after his asylum status is revoked he fears deportation and barely leaves his apartment� As a permanent outsider, he is rendered immobile and speechless� While Karim does find moments to circumvent the rules and reclaim mobility and speech for himself, e�g�, through the kidnapping or different disguises, this freedom is either imagined or temporary� The novel’s most significant articulation of Karim’s immobility lies in the fact that everything in the narrative present is either a memory of past events or a hallucination� Because the narrative is focalized through Karim and most of his interactions are remembered or imagined, the reader is inside Karim’s head for the entire novel - much like Karim is inside an apartment and traveling to different times and places only in his mind� In his hallucinated conversation with Frau Schulz, Karim recalls an actual attempt to pay her a visit, but due to the strong police presence at the Munich train station, he was afraid to get to the platform� However, even if he had managed to get on board, he would have likely been detected by the police who frequently control these trains: “[…] und jedes verdammte Mal, wenn sie einen solchen Zug kontrollieren, fragen sie keinen der schönen blonden Fahrgäste nach ihrem Personalausweis� Geradewegs kommen sie immer zu mir - respektive zu den schwarzhaarigen oder auf andere Weise fremdländisch aussehenden Reisenden” (18)� Karim believes that he could only be safe if he could afford a ride in first class and the proper clothing for disguise (18)� The clothing reference returns later in the novel in a memory of his father, who had told his son that being well dressed would keep him safe from the police (42)� Yet despite wearing the nice clothes his father gave him, Karim is picked up almost immediately after entering Germany (43)� Racial profiling, which is already indicated in the scene above, becomes part of his daily experience, and he criticizes Germans for their unacknowledged racism and Islamophobia (e�g�, 19, 168—69)� In Ohrfeige, Khider does not go into detail describing Karim’s skin tone, as he has done in previous works (Stan 289—90, 294)� Nonetheless, racial discrimination runs as a subtext throughout the novel� Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 373 Wherever Karim goes, people view him with suspicion� Even with the correct papers, he has regular interactions with the German police� Because he feels unwelcome and unsafe in German public spaces, he avoids train stations or pedestrian zones (Ohrfeige 29)� Repeatedly, he describes his unsuccessful attempts to belong: with respectable clothing and newspaper choices, by learning the language or by finding a job� Yet, whether he just goes unnoticed or is actively rejected, he remains an outsider� When the risk of harassment turns into the risk of deportation, Karim is confined to his small apartment and his own mind� As these spaces are separate from any public or shared spaces, they are isolated and indifferent to locality� Karim’s physical immobility and dislocation are deeply entwined with issues of speechlessness or possessing the “wrong” kind of language� In fact, language’s inadequacies, failures, and susceptibility to manipulations are at the core of this novel� An example is when Karim is at the train station for his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to take a train to Niederhofen� While he waits for an opportune moment to get to the platform, he sits in a café and pretends to read� To conceal his identity, he deliberately chooses a “serious newspaper” over the tabloid Bild Zeitung: “Offensichtlich denken sie [die Polizei], dass ein Illegaler aus einem dieser unterentwickelten Länder sicher nicht lesen kann� Mit der Süddeutschen Zeitung in der Hand trägt man als Illegaler in Bayern gewissermaßen Tarnfarben” (14)� Karim’s observation is a sarcastic comment on the question of literacy and the “outsider’s” presumed intellectual inadequacy� After all, the Bild Zeitung is Germany’s most widely read daily publication, known for its populist tones, simple language, short articles, and image-heavy content� Its popularity, however, must be attributed to German readers rather than “illiterate foreigners�” The left-liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung, on the other hand, features longer articles and in-depth reporting and signals a “respectable,” i�e�, bourgeois, German existence� Karim is keenly aware of others’ stereotypes and expectations, and he has developed strategies that help him blend in� However, in the end, the newspaper only enables him to remain in the café undetected; it does not provide enough cover for him to actually board a train� Another example demonstrates how the structural limitation of the foreigner’s right to speak and the mechanisms of exclusion are tied to language� Karim hopes to begin his university studies as soon as possible, but he cannot get financial support for the prerequisite German language course (157—60)� By denying him the language course, the bureaucracy controls Karim’s access to the German language and educational system, restricts his participation in German society, and reinforces his status as an outsider� In light of this silencing, it is significant that the novel begins with Karim reclaiming language and his right to speak, albeit by violent means� This situation represents a complete break- 374 Karolina May-Chu down in communication (Pokrywka 417), but this time, Karim takes control and dictates the conditions of the exchange� Although he reclaims his voice, the conversation remains a hallucination and does not translate into any actual power� Communication is doomed to fail, but it is not only because the kidnapping is just imagined� Even within the fantasy, the interaction is one-sided� With her mouth taped shut and Karim speaking Arabic, Frau Schulz can neither understand nor respond (Pokrywa 417)� Karim himself has no reason to believe that a true dialogue could ever be possible, and in grammatically imperfect German he complains to Frau Schulz that she never had any interest in talking� Because German is difficult for him, yet he has a lot to say, he then switches to Arabic, which in the novel is rendered in perfect German: “Es ist natürlich Quatsch jetzt mit ihr Arabisch zu sprechen, aber was soll’s” (Ohrfeige 10)� Corina Stan regards such switches in Khider’s novels as acts of translation and pivotal moments for reading his work as world literature (Stan 296—97): His novels can expand the reader’s horizon, because they are, using Rebecca Walkowitz’s term, “born translated” (295)� Stan describes how Khider’s “characters presumably speak Arabic, but the novels are written in German; the translation comes first, in an unacknowledged reversal of the original and the copy” (295)� Through such translations, Western readers learn about other lives and world historical events (295), in this case Karim’s life story and its entanglement with global politics� 8 However, within this novel, the switch epitomizes Karim’s isolation in Germany and a mental return to another time in his life (one that is often no less hostile)� 9 Karim has given up hope that he can “world” anyone, i�e�, instill a sense of cosmopolitan connectedness in those deciding his fate, and he resorts to violence� The fact that the violence is just as feigned as the language switch only highlights that Karim has no control over his own life and must compensate with his imagination� Karim’s complete isolation in the novel echoes the public-political discourse in which the refugee is an outsider (Tafazoli 222—23; see also note 8)� Because no one will listen to Karim, he inverts the situation by preventing Frau Schulz both from speaking and understanding� Karim may thus be “reclaiming agency in the process of translation” by providing the reader insights into his life (Stan 295—96), but within the novel he is unable to reverse the powerless position of an asylum seeker� As Carlotta von Maltzan also notes, this failure is not a purely linguistic one either but a clashing of vastly different life experiences (99—100)� Karim notes: “Auch wenn Arabisch ihre Muttersprache wäre, würde sie mich nicht verstehen� Sie stammt aus einer ganz anderen Welt als ich� Ein Erdling spricht gerade mit einem Marsianer� Oder umgekehrt” (Ohrfeige 10)� In this scenario communication can never succeed because there is not even a Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 375 shared human connection to build upon� The position of alien and human may be interchangeable, but the two species are incomprehensible to one another� In addition to the impeded mobility and struggles against speechlessness, Karim’s alienation and trauma are amplified by concerns over the integrity of his body� Karim’s racially marked “refugee body” already makes him an outsider to European society, as his difficulties in public spaces demonstrate� In addition, he also experiences a mismatch of body and gender identity� After only indicating that something about his body is a source of shame and the reason for leaving Iraq (44), Karim reveals that he developed breasts during puberty� He recalls the feeling of estrangement as his body begins to change and his fears of transforming into a “Monster” (78)� After Karim kept it a secret for many years, a German doctor diagnoses the condition as gynecomastia, an enlargement of the mammary glands that is the result of a relatively common hormone imbalance (92) and is treatable as an endocrinological disorder� Karim’s condition has psychological roots and was likely caused by a traumatic event when Karim was twelve years old� His friend Hayat, a mute girl who was about two years older, was abducted by three men, raped, and murdered (83)� Karim continues to be haunted by nightmares, and he believes that Hayat’s body has merged with his� He tries to disguise his breasts through clothing or by acting especially masculine, but his body remains a source of shame and a constant reminder of his friend's death (87)� More than a mere discomfort with his own body, his condition is a safety concern� In Iraq, Karim fears that he could be sexually assaulted, especially during his compulsory military service (90)� While this fear is his true reason for leaving Iraq, he is also worried that the German courts would not recognize it as a valid reason for asylum� He therefore adopts the story of a former classmate, who had told a joke about the Iraqi president and his wife in school� This lie enables Karim to claim political asylum (107—09), but it also blurs his identity even further� In sum, much like his location in the world, Karim’s body is ambiguous and a source of insecurity� It is a site of racist exclusion, shame and trauma, and it is deeply entangled with global politics and histories of exclusion, subjugation, and violence� This body is always in a particular location at any given time, but it is also always on the verge of being erased or extinguished� Karim’s immobility and dislocation, the limitations of his ability to speak, and the insecurity he feels about his body are all evidence of the multiple crises he has experienced and continues to endure� Fearing for his life, he perceives (and narrates) the world in a “crisis mode,” as Stan describes� Despite his multiple displacements, the narrator is not indifferent to the world (Stan 299), but he does reject any ethical responsibility of amending it� Karim, it seems, does not want to serve as a token refugee, nor should he have to� As Stuart Taberner 376 Karolina May-Chu aptly notes, “[…] it should not be necessary for the refugee to ‘have a story,’ be ‘likeable,’ or be someone we can ‘identify with’” because framing it in such terms “may ultimately undermine the principle that asylum is an absolute right that must not be subject to the vagaries of empathy” (Taberner, “Rethinking Solidarity” 833)� Already the title of the novel may suggest the narrator’s refusal to become a “Sinnstifter” (Clemens) for Europeans� 10 That responsibility, one can argue, lies with his audience: in the storyworld, an imagined bureaucrat who cannot understand; in the real world, the German, European, or international reader� To conclude, notions of European and world literature are based on the premise that the production and circulation of literature is embedded in global processes� Likewise, German literature today, understood as a body of texts and an institutionalized expression of German self-understanding, is multifaceted and diverse� Narratives of refuge offer powerful critiques of the contradictions and exclusions created by various types of borders� In this way, they also challenge us to rethink the idea of “locating” literature and its authors in clearly defined and fixed spaces� In this context, I read Ohrfeige as an insistence on global connectedness and a critique of Germany and Europe as hostile spaces that prohibit arrival of those deemed unworthy� I have argued that Khider uses (im)mobility, language, and the body as sites for negotiating belonging and exclusion� In so doing, he creates a complex and often blurred global map in which personal and global histories intertwine� Ohrfeige is thereby part of the growing worldliness, or “Weltläufigkeit,” of contemporary German-language literature, to use German-Bulgarian writer Ilija Trojanow’s expression� For Trojanow, German-language literature written by migrant authors is evidence of deeply held cosmopolitan commitments, and it facilitates the merging (“hineinwachsen”) of German-language literature into the world literary space� At the same time, narratives like Ohrfeige also bring the world to German readers (and readers of other languages), adding perspectives that are indispensable for the continuous imagination and reimagination of Germany and Europe� 11 German Studies scholars have been invested in a project of decentering the nation and complicating established narratives for several decades� Dismantling the facile compartmentalization of authors, their texts, and the stories they tell also remains an important task for the future� After all, while authors, narrators or protagonists may be situated within Germany at a given moment, their writing, feeling, thinking, and acting is informed by multiple locations and global contexts that produce entangled attachments and affiliations� Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 377 Notes 1 I would like to thank the editors, Anke Biendarra and Friederike Eigler, for their invaluable comments during the revision process� I am grateful to Nicole Spigner for her critical questions and observations, and to Katherine Anderson, B� Venkat Mani, and Jamele Watkins for their suggestions at different stages of this article� My thanks also go to the Office of Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for their support� 2 See, for example, Hardtke et al� for analyses and theoretical reflections on spaces and figures of refuge in recent German literature� See also Fauth and Parr on the “new realisms” in contemporary German literature and Schramm’s examination of Khider’s use of irony in this context� In her MA thesis, Sabine Zimmermann reads Ohrfeige as a transcultural novel and critique of Germany’s exclusionary practices� She views the novel as a mirror of German society (52) and analyzes the multiple identities that the figure of the refugee embodies� 3 Comparative literature scholar Søren Frank advocates for the term “migration literature” (rather than “migrant literature”), which I am using here as well� According to Frank, the term shifts emphasis to the content and form of literary works rather than authorial biographies� It includes writers of migrant and non-migrant backgrounds alike and acknowledges the pervasiveness of migratory processes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (52)� I use the term “narratives of refuge” here for similar reasons, despite relatively few documented uses of the term� My choice also reflects the German distinction between “Fluchtliteratur” (literature about flight or refuge) and the more essentializing “Flüchtlingsliteratur” (refugee literature)� 4 Many scholars are instrumental in decentering the national framework of German Studies� Collections include, among others, Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration 1955—2005 (Göktürk et al�) from 2007, as well as the 2017 “Forum: Migration Studies” (Arslan et al�) in German Quarterly� An overview of the broader history of the field and its intellectual origins is provided by Mani and Segelcke� For a placement of Khider’s work within this context, see also Stan (287—88)� The study of German literature today is also enriched by the application of the world literature concept, as the volume Reading German Literature as World Literature, edited by Thomas O� Beebee, demonstrates� In his introduction, Beebee gives a concise overview of some of the main positions and approaches in world literature, especially how they relate to the German context (1—22)� 5 World literature examines, for example, how aesthetic forms, ideas, and texts travel within an unequal literary system and how and under what 378 Karolina May-Chu conditions they enter or exit the world literary space� World literary theory thus often applies a postcolonial lens and thereby also criticizes the dominance of the English language and the tendency for literary fields to place Europe and North America at the center of study (e�g�, Beebee, Damrosch)� In challenging these constellations, world literary theory, especially within the context of an entangled literary history, has much to offer to German literary studies, as Werberger also notes (124—27)� 6 The novel was first published in German in 2016, and it has so far been translated into Bosnian (2017), Dutch (2017), Latvian (2017), Hungarian (2018), and English (2018)� 7 Stehle and Weber point out that because “spaces of non-arrival” foster “precarious intimacies,” they also bear some connection to Randall Halle’s concept of the “interzone” (77)� They refer to Halle’s conceptualization of the interzone as an “ideational space, a sense of being somewhere that unites two places, if even only transitionally or temporarily” (Halle 4—5)� More generally, the concept of the interzone also provides an important model for a critical European Studies as it decenters the nation state and instead highlights entanglements and exchanges� It is based on a notion of Europe as a “space of becoming” (4) that is neither unified nor homogeneous but rather a “moment of productive transit in the interzone” (5)� 8 Hamid Tafazoli highlights a similar educational moment when he describes the refugee as a border figure (“Grenzfigur”) in two different senses: in the public-political discourse the refugee is an outsider (222—23), but in the literary discourse, they are constructed as an intercultural figure (224)� Literature can create spaces of inclusion, for example in the form of a shared memorial space (“Gedächtnisraum”) in which refugees participate and where their experiences become accessible for European audiences (223—24)� 9 Focusing on production rather than reception, Katherine Anderson has examined Abbas Khider’s language shift into German as the author’s way of distancing and coping with trauma through his writing� In this regard, one could also ask whether Karim’s return to his native Arabic (even if rendered in German by Khider) signals both an imagined return to a lost homeland and a retraumatization because this return is not possible� 10 See also Carlotta von Maltzan, who argues that Karim demands critical reflection from the reader and is not a figure they can identify with� For a critique of Eurocentrism, see Stehle and Weber, who caution against reproducing racialized hierarchies in narratives of migration and refuge (e�g�, 77—78)� 11 These new perspectives also demand work across linguistic boundaries - something I was unable to do in this contribution� Certainly, my analysis Reading Germany, Europe, and the World in Abbas Khider’s Novel Ohrfeige 379 would have benefitted from knowledge of Arabic� Here I want to point to Lobna Fouad, who demonstrates how Arabic culture and the Arabic language (e�g�, in the form of translated proverbs or idiomatic expressions) are present in Khider’s novels� Works Cited Anderson, Katherine� “Von der Wanderung zum Wandel: Die Migration des Abbas Khider in die deutsche Sprache als Traumabewältigung durch Erzählen�” Turns und kein Ende? 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