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Doctoral Candidates Alice Flinta Alice’s research interests have developed in the fields of translation, postcolonial, transnational, and migrant literature; she has conducted archival research on Franco-Algerian writer Albert Camus’s manuscripts, and in her master’s thesis she explored how French author Michel Houellebecq reconceptualises Camus’s absurd, adapting it to the contemporary world. Button Read More Evangeline Petra Scarpulla Interested in speculative and imaginative genre criticism, contemporary feminist literary theory, and decolonizing the canon, Evangeline Scarpulla holds a BA in Comparative Literature with Honours from King’s College London and an MSc in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Button Read More Laura Bak Cely Laura Bak is a Gender and Diversity Ph.D. student at the Universidad de Oviedo. She holds a B.A. in Literary Studies from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, with a minor in Philosophy, and an M.A in Literature from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Button Read More María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto holds an Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies (GEMMA) from the universities of Granada in Spain and Łódź in Poland. Button Read More Marina Casado Guerrero I hold a BA in English Studies at the Universidad de Sevilla, an MA in English Literature and Linguistics at the Universidad de Granada and an Erasmus Mundus MA in Gender and Women’s Studies (GEMMA) at the Universidad de Granada and Utrecht University. Before joining EUTERPE, I have already participated in different international conferences in literary studies, such as the European Beat Studies Network conferences. Button Read More Ninutsa Nadirashvili Ninutsa Nadirashvili is a Georgian-American gender studies scholar, editor, and translator. Button Read More Olga Fenoll Martínez Olga Fenoll-Martínez holds a BA in Translation and Interpreting (University of Granada) and an MA in English Literature and Linguistics (University of Granada). Button Read More Samriddhi Pandey Samriddhi's research centers on investigating the impact of the transnational turn in autobiographies as a gendered literary genre. Button Read More Séamus O'Kane Séamus O’Kane is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Granada and his mobility period will take place at the University of Lodz. Button Read More Tamara Cvetković Tamara Cvetković holds a master’s degree in Gender Studies from Central European University and bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Belgrade. Button Read More Uthara Geetha Uthara Geetha is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oviedo, Spain working on ‘The role of transnational literatures in the decolonization of understandings of gender within the European academe’. Button Read More

Jaya Jacobo Coventry University Researcher Jaya Jacobo is a transfeminine thinker and artist based at Coventry University where she currently does work on trans feminist pedagogies in literature, art and performance. She has worked alongside travesti and transsexual women artists, scholars and community workers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well as with trans, queer and nonbinary Filipina/x/o performers from the Philippines and Filipino diaspora abroad. Jacobo was a former Board Member of the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines (STRAP), a former President of the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle (YCC) of the Philippines, a Founding Co-Editor of Queer Southeast Asia: A Transgressive Journal of Literary Art and Co-Editor of BKL: Bikol/Bakla, Anthology of Bikolnon Gay Trans Queer Writing . Jaya is the author of Arasahas , her debut volume of poetry in Filipino from Savage Mind Publishing House. Publications: Jacobo, Jaya. 2024. “A Love That Burns Hot Enough to Last: Scenes from Trans Tropical Love”. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 23 (1):18-24. Adriany, V, Bong, SA, Curtin, B, Jacobo, J & Luther, JD. 2022. "Pedagogy of queer studies beyond empire." in S Tang & HY Wijaya (eds), Queer Southeast Asia. 1 edn, Taylor and Francis - Balkema, pp. 243-265.

Hélène Cixous, Echo, Subjectivity, Diffraction (Part 2): A Conversation with Professor Birgit Kaiser In this two-part episode of the EUTERPE Podcast, doctoral candidate Uthara Geetha (University of Oviedo) speaks with Professor. Birgit Kaiser (Utrecht University) about her second monograph ‘Hélène Cixous's Poetics of Voice: Echo - Subjectivity – Diffraction. Prof. Kaiser reveals how Hélène Cixous’s poetic fictions perform a radical, anti-essentialist model of subjectivity as “voice”– one that emerges not from a closed individual but from a ceaseless echo of other beings, places, and times. Kaiser introduces the concept of “echology” (ecology with a silent *h*) to reframe Cixous’s much-debated “feminine writing” as a material, relational, and deeply situated mode of becoming that includes the dead, the non-human, and the absent. Through a diffractive reading that thinks with Cixous rather than merely about her, this podcast shows how her work offers a timely, decolonial, and eco-logical path for reimagining selfhood, solidarity, and critique in the twenty-first century. The episode transcript can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by: Uthara Geetha . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla, and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

A Conversation with Marta Olivi on Translation In this podcast, doctoral candidate Evangeline Scarpulla speaks with translator Marta Olivi. During the conversation we discuss Marta’s four major English to Italian translation projects: Canta Ancora, Ragazza (2022), a translation of Jacqueline Roy’s The Fat Lady Sings (2000); L’Antropocene Inconscio (2022), a translation of Mark Bould’s The Anthropocene Unconscious (2021); Paradiso Terrestre (2024), a translation of Laura Vandenberg’s State of Paradise (2024); and selected poems from Molly Brodak's The Cipher (2020). Olivi also talks about her approach to translation work, the intersections between translation and academic research, and the importance of translation in today's transnational literary landscape. We hope that you enjoy listening to this podcast. Since recording this episode, Marta Olivi has completed three additional translation projects: Dolce il Frutto, Aspra la Terra (2025), a translation of Rebecca Ley’s Sweet Fruit, Sour Land (2018); Isabella Nagg e il Vaso di Basilico (2025), a translation of Oliver Darkshire’s Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil (2025); and Dungeon Crawler Carl: Il Giorno del Giudizio (2026), a translation of Matt Dinniman’s Carl's Doomsday Scenario (2021). The episode transcript can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by Evangeline Scarpulla . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla, and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Team Coventry Katherine Wimpenny Principal Investigator Katherine Wimpenny, PhD, MA, DipCOT, CertEd, is a Professor of Research in Global Education at the Research Centre for Global Learning, Coventry University, UK. She is the Theme Lead for ‘Education without Boundaries’ and has 24+ years of experience in higher education research and practice. Katherine’s research with colleagues, locally and globally, is grounded in comprehensive internationalisation, emphasising inclusive pedagogies, interdisciplinarity, social justice, decolonisation, and the role of the ethically engaged university. Her research considers a diversity of learning spaces (digital, face-to-face, blended, formal, informal, and non-formal) that interweave to impact educational opportunities that can connect international learning communities and the university to its locale. She is experienced in a range of approaches to inquiry, including Qualitative Research Synthesis, Arts-Based Educational Research, Participatory and Action Research, Appreciative Inquiry, and Transdisciplinary Feminist Research, including Post Qualitative Inquiry. Jaya Jacobo Researcher Jaya Jacobo is a transfeminine thinker and artist based at Coventry University where she currently does work on trans feminist pedagogies in literature, art and performance. She has worked alongside travesti and transsexual women artists, scholars and community workers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well as with trans, queer and nonbinary Filipina/x/o performers from the Philippines and Filipino diaspora abroad. Jacobo was a former Board Member of the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines (STRAP), a former President of the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle (YCC) of the Philippines, a Founding Co-Editor of Queer Southeast Asia: A Transgressive Journal of Literary Art and Co-Editor of BKL: Bikol/Bakla, Anthology of Bikolnon Gay Trans Queer Writing . Jaya is the author of Arasahas , her debut volume of poetry in Filipino from Savage Mind Publishing House. Suzanne Clisby Employability Mentor Suzanne Clisby (FRSA) is Professor of Education and Social Justice at the University of Lincoln with longstanding experience and expertise in academic research and leadership, teaching and authorship. She has conducted over 15 research projects, totalling circa. £8m and has trained numerous scholars in feminist methodological approaches and qualitative methods. She provides expertise in gender analyses, participatory development, life history narrative methods and creative praxis across a range of academic and NGO contexts, including a University of Iceland/UNESCO international fellowship programme. Professor Suzanne Clisby was the UK PI of the Horizon Europe European MSCA EUTERPE project (2022-24) and continues to work closely with the EUTERPE Consortium as a Special Project Advisor, Supervisory Expert Advisor (Coventry) and Employability Mentor (Granada). Professor Clisby was the Co-Director of the UKRI GCRF Global Gender and Cultures of Equality  (GlobalGRACE) Project (2017-2022), PI and Director of the Horizon 2020 MSCA Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe (GRACE) Project (2015-2019), and, for over a decade, Co-Editor of the Journal of Gender Studies. Her research focuses on gender, education and development. Her publications and edited collections include Gendering Women: identity and mental wellbeing through the life course  (with Holdsworth, 2016, Policy Press), in which she provides a materialist feminist analysis of the symbolic, structural and visceral violence of everyday encounters with constructions of gender; The State of Girls Rights in the UK  (with Alsop, 2016, New Internationalists Publications); Theorising Cultures of Equality  (with Johnson & Turner, 2020, Routledge); Gender, Sexuality and Identities of the Borderlands: Queering the Margins  (2020, Routledge); Investigating Cultures of Equality (with Golańska and Różalska, 2022, Routledge); and Performing Cultures of Equality (with Durán-Almarza and Rodríguez-González, 2022, Routledge).

Reading for Each Other Review of 'The Eighth Life' by Nino Haratischvili Haratischvili’s novel joins a tradition of feminist authors who give voice to the unique ways in which war, famine, dictatorship, and revolution are experienced by caregivers and women. by Evangeline Petra Scarpulla Review of ‘The Emperor's Babe' by Bernadine Evaristo Evaristo boldly challenges the prevailing notion of Britain as a white man’s nation by interweaving Roman history with elements of contemporary Black British culture and fiction, offering alternative visions of London. In doing so, she skilfully illuminates the often-overlooked histories of the African diaspora within both Roman and British contexts, while exercising creative license to craft a compelling counter-historical narrative. by Uthara Geetha Review of 'Dogs of Summer' by Andrea Abreu Abreu's novel places provincial life at the center stage and transforms the ordinary experiences of two young adolescents into extraordinary. Also, the novel celebrates the Canarian Spanish dialect and language difference and invites the reader to experience the narrative through a descriptive narration and imagery. by María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto Review of 'Sexe et mensonges' by Leïla Slimani Slimani’s interlocutors navigate their secret, but rich sexual lives, being constantly at risk of losing their social position and freedom. Their testimonies are often deeply saddening, but also witty and humorous. Most of them stress the society’s hypocrisy over sexuality, pointing out that the system promotes the exploitation and commercialization of the female body, while pretending to support “virtue”. Slimani leads the reader through these stories bringing different voices into a conversation by providing examples from Moroccan public life, scholarly articles, and her personal experiences. by Tamara Cvetković Review of 'Exquisite Cadavers' by Meena Kandasamy From the outset, Kandasamy expresses her intention to separate the biographical from fiction. Yet, the autobiographical elements that she registers on the text’s margins spill over into the “main” text, blurring the boundaries between personal and fictional. One may ask if Exquisite Cadavers can exist without its margins; however, such a question is predicated on the assumption that the margin is a separable entity that can somehow be extracted from the novel proper. The margins are not merely experimental additions; they drive the text, adding theoretical and political arguments informed by the author’s material and lived experiences. by Samriddhi Pandey Review of 'Rosso come una sposa' by Anilda Ibrahimi Ibrahimi writes in swift sentences that mirror the simple, yet tortured, living of her characters, whilst giving voice to the complexities of human relationships – a fine balancing act between the innocence of young voices and the weight of words passed down through bodies that carry their pasts. by Alice Flinta Reviews of 'White is for Witching' by Helen Oyeyemi Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching combines elements of the gothic tradition, vampire stories and haunted house stories to craft a narrative which probes issues of xenophobia and racism in contemporary British society. The novel follows Miranda, a young woman with vampiric qualities, as a sentient house intervenes in her life to protect, control and possess her. by Séamus O’Kane Review of 'Persepolis' by Marjane Satrapi While reading Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, three major questions emerge. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? by Ninutsa Nadirashvili Review of 'Down with the Poor!' by Shumona Sinha An evocative portrayal of those who arrive but never truly ‘arrive.’ Down with the Poor! is a novel about borderlands—geographic, linguistic, and personal. by Laura Bak Cely Review of 'Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative' by Isabella Hammad This creative review pairs Isabella Hammad’s theoretical work – Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative with the Georgian semi-fictional 1958 film Mamluki to discuss themes of exile, transnationalism, subjectivity, recognizing the stranger, and what must come after. by Ninutsa Nadirashvili

Tamara Cvetković Central European University Doctoral Candidate Tamara Cvetković holds a master’s degree in Gender Studies from Central European University and bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Belgrade. Prior to her engagement as a Junior Visiting Researcher within the EUTERPE Project: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective and the enrollment in Ph.D. Program in Comparative Gender Studies at CEU in 2023/2024, she spent several years working as a program manager in an NGO based in Serbia that dealt with migration issues, intercultural education, and interdisciplinary approaches to transcultural phenomena. Over this period, her main areas of interest were gender studies, transnational migration, postcolonialism/decolonial theory, Orientalism/Balkanism, feminist and critical pedagogy, use of literature and art in activism. Her research focuses on the literary production of transnational women-identified contemporary authors from the Balkans whose work thematize migration, identity, linguistic and cultural translation, as well as their complex relationships with literary ‘classics.’ Focusing mainly on the authors from the Western Balkans, she plans to analyze border-crossings and travelling though physical and imagined geographies, fictional worlds, literary traditions and genres, and cultural traditions with an aim to map their trajectories through the lens of feminist interpretation as well as to map cultural translations that are framing their works. In addition, her aim is to explore the ways in which they (re)use literary ‘classics’ in revolutionary ways (Standford Friedman, 2019) to create new works, and how these works continue their transnational circulation. Contributions: Review of Sexe et mensonges by Leïla Slimani

Dorota Golańska University of Lodz Principal Investigator Dorota Golańska is an associate professor (Cultural Studies and Religion) at the Department of Cultural Research, University of Lodz, Poland. She has degrees in Cultural Studies, Literary Studies and International Studies. Her research interests include feminist approaches to political violence and studies of collective memory, especially in relation to traumatic experiences and their representation in culture. She also works on such issues as creative strategies of resistance as well as intersections of memory, art and activism. Publications: Hamarowski, Bartosz, and Dorota Golańska. 2023. “A Wicked Vestal: Subverting the Androcentric Imaginaries of the Smart Home.” Australian Feminist Studies 38 (117): 267–86. Golańska, D., & Woźniak-Bobińska, M. (2023). Spaces of fluidity: articulating ‘politics of presence’ through place-based activism in Iqrit (Israel). Cultural Geographies, 31(1), 47-65.

Nino Haratischvili’s 'The Eighth Life': An Intergenerational Tale of Sisters, Sunflower Seeds and Cherry Liqueur Haratischvili’s novel joins a tradition of feminist authors who give voice to the unique ways in which war, famine, dictatorship, and revolution are experienced by caregivers and women. by Evangeline Scarpulla 25 February 2025 Review: Haratischvili, Nino. The Eighth Life: (for Brilka). Translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. (London: Scribe Publications, 2019). [1] Can reconstructing the stories of our ancestors help us to better understand ourselves? What stories do people share and what secrets do they keep? How far do family ties stretch? How does one survive when social and political circumstances carry them down unforeseen paths? These are some of the questions author Nino Haratischvili grapples with in her epic 935-page novel about the multi-generational Jashi family, an upper-class Georgian family from a small town outside of Tbilisi. At once a novel of mis-adventure, love, and tragedy, Haratischvili frames the century-long story through the eyes of Niza, who is recording the stories of her family for her young niece and friend Brilka. As the reader, we follow Niza as she recounts the tales that her great-grandmother Stasia told her about the past five generations of Jashis. As each section of the seven-part novel progresses, we eagerly anticipate the introduction of new characters, and yearn for happy endings for those we have grown attached to. Amidst these stories, Haratischvili expertly weaves an informed historical account of life in Georgia during the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, as experienced by an extensive cast of children, grandmothers, soldiers, academics, KGB officers, activists, poets, rebels, and dancers. The novel is framed as a collection of stories passed down through over five generations of women. Narrated by Niza and addressed to Brilka, the book is intended as a gift of family history for the youngest Jashi woman. Through this complex narrative framing, Haratischvili emphasises the importance of family ties, the value of sisterhood, and the significance of inherited knowledge. The frequent asides in which Niza directly addresses Brilka, and the use of second-person narration, encourages readers to see through Brilka’s eyes and to feel as though they too are part of the Jashi family’s history. When Brilka enters the story as a primary character towards the end of the novel, the narration shifts to third-person, and the novel’s addressee – a girl of fourteen with a passion for dancing and an intense desire to know where she comes from – begins to take on a personality and voice of her own. Through these subtle narrative techniques, Haratischvili accomplishes the task of drawing in the reader and eliciting an emotional investment in the characters’ stories. In many ways, the novel reads as a long and liberating gossip session exchanged between sisters over a glass of cherry liqueur. The openness and vulnerability with which Niza invites her niece Brilka to explore her family’s past, which includes tales of trauma and loss, shows the mutual trust and affection that form between these two women as a result of their shared history. At times, one questions whether the young Brilka will be able to process the often violent stories which her aunt recounts. However, by the end of the novel, it is clear that Brilka has a right to these histories, because they are the ones that ferried the other women in her family through the currents of their lives to the point of her conception. Many reviewers have drawn comparisons between Haratischvili’s novel and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1867). These connections have been drawn because of the novel’s emphasis on the political and historical context of the character’s lives, the polyphonic narrative style, and the internal references to Tolstoy’s novels. However, the thoughtful reader should consider the problematic implications of comparing or equating a distinctly Georgian narrative – which critically reflects on the history of Georgia’s subjugation under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union – to a classic Russian novel. Furthermore, Haratischvili’s novel focalises women’s voices and their perspectives on war, family, and nation, contrasting significantly with the largely male perspectives through which Tolstoy’s narrative, one firmly rooted in the patriarchal canon, is told. Indeed, Haratischvili’s playful and imaginative language, the fantastical elements of the novel, and the specific focus on the lives and experiences of the women in the Jashi family is perhaps more reminiscent of Isabel Allende’s multigenerational magical realist novel The House of the Spirits (1982), or Laura Esquivel’s novella Like Water for Chocolate (1989), in which the main character has the ability to imbue her cooking with her desires and intentions, giving the dishes mystical properties similar to those of the hot chocolate that appears as a mysterious thread linking the tragedies and events that occur in The Eighth Life . Haratischvili’s novel joins a tradition of feminist authors who give voice to the unique ways in which war, famine, dictatorship, and revolution are experienced by caregivers and women. Despite the graphic nature of the more traumatic moments in the novel, the reader is bolstered by the undeniable hope and support that permeates the relationships between the Jashi women and provides them with the strength to endure their social and political circumstances. This is most acutely illustrated by the account of Kitty’s return home after she endures brutal and violent questioning at the hands of the NKVD. Afterwards, Kitty finds solidarity and understanding in her relationship with her aunt, Christine, who is a survivor herself. While sharing her story, Kitty runs her hands over Christine’s face, a face scarred by an acid attack, ‘in the hope that by studying Christine’s map she would be able to create her own. A map of her own that would show her how to go on living. A survival map.’ [2] By telling these stories the narrator provides Brilka with her own survival map, one made up of the lifelines belonging to the women of her past. Another parallel between Haratischvili’s novel and the work of feminist writers like Isabel Allende is the undercurrent of unexplained, magical, and uncanny elements. As mentioned earlier, the family’s tantalising and indulgent hot chocolate recipe, invented by Stasia’s father in the early 20th century, is more than just the secret to his success. It becomes a part of the Jashi family lore, made by those seeking comfort in times of strife, and feared for its tendency to ‘bring about calamity’ in the lives of those who taste it.[3] This curse, coupled with the fact that much of the novel’s plot is triggered by events that occur at a Gatsby-esque masquerade ball in the lively and colourful hills of Tbilisi, lends the narrative a carnivalesque tone, foregrounding the absurd, surreal and humorous in the tale. These fantastical elements are particularly present in the characterisation of the family’s matriarch, Niza’s great-grandmother Stasia. For example, Stasia’s introduction in the story is framed as a mythologised incident of birth: She came into the world – so I was told – in the coldest winter at the dawn of the twentieth century. She had a headful of hair; you could have plaited it, they said. And with her first cry she was, in fact, already dancing. They said she laughed as she cried, as if she were crying more to reassure the adults, her parents, the midwives, the country doctor, not because she had to. And they said that with her first steps she was already describing a pas de deux. And that she loved chocolate, always. And that before she could say ‘Father’ she was babbling Madame Butterfly. [4] Stasia’s eccentric nature grows throughout the century long narrative, reflected by the magical and anthropomorphic wildness of the fairy-tale dwellings she inhabits. She seems to grow younger and younger with each passing year, is known for her lucidity and her quick tongue, and is eager to react with stubbornness and profanity to her son’s controlling nature and the events of the world. Stasia’s clarity and youthful spirit are offset by the strange power she develops to see and talk to the dead, which grows as, one-by-one, her loved ones join the ranks of the ghosts. Because of the way that Haratischvili lightly dances back and forth across the line of magical storytelling and realism, by the end of the novel the reader is left wondering if hot chocolate can really kill and whether they will one day see the dead playing cards in their garden. The Eighth Life is a masterful mixing of fact and fiction and a window into Georgian history and culture – complete with images of Tbilisi, sunflower seeds, chacha, and horses native to the Georgian steppe. It is approachable for readers unacquainted with the history of the Soviet Union, the Caucasus, and the Cold War, but offers unique insight for others with greater familiarity. The references and accounts of real-life figures such as ‘The Generalissimus’, and ‘The Little Big Man,’ are integrated with the stories of fictional characters, such as Giorgi Alania and Konstantin Jashi, who in the novel also occupy significant government positions in the Soviet Union. Additionally, each chapter begins with a quote, taken from a variety of historical sources including Vladimir Lenin, Soviet poster slogans, Anton Chekhov, David Bowie, and The Taming of the Shrew. The attentive reader will notice the occasional instances when Haratischvili attributes one of these epigraphs to a fictional character in the novel, such as the exiled Patti Smith-esque singer songwriter Kitty Jashi. Through this intertextuality, the author seamlessly integrates her fictional characters into the cultural and political history of the 20th-century, and leaves the reader wondering where the history ends, and the fiction begins. The final page of this seven-part story contains only one line: the chapter title ‘Book VIII: Brilka.’ [5] This open-ended conclusion invites the young Brilka to continue the saga of the Jashi family with her own ongoing story. Thus, Haratischvili’s novel, so often about pain and loss, ends as one full of hope and love, leaving the reader with the intense desire to explore their own family history, and a deeper understanding of Georgian history and culture. [1] This translation is translated from the original German. Readers should note that there are some phonetic inconsistencies between the English spellings and the Georgian names and terms. [2] Nino Haratischvili, The Eighth Life: (for Brilka) , trans. by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (London: Scribe Publications, 2019), p. 227. [3] Haratischvili, p. 49. [4] Haratischvili, pp. 16-17. [5] Haratischvili, p. 935.

Review of Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad This creative review pairs Isabella Hammad’s theoretical work – "Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative" with the Georgian semi-fictional 1958 film "Mamluki" to discuss themes of exile, transnationalism, subjectivity, recognizing the stranger, and what must come after. by Ninutsa Nadirashvili 10 June 2026 Review of Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad Originally delivered at Columbia University on September 28, 2023, Isabella Hammad’s Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative has now been published by Black Cat – an imprint of Grove Atlantic – along with a more recently-written afterword on Gaza. In said afterword, Hammad writes: The world has tolerated violence against Palestinians for a long time, but this attack has exceeded that violence to an extent that has at moments been intolerable even for those who consider themselves total bystanders. But while the world’s majority may say no – hundreds of thousands in the streets of Algiers, Jakarta, London, even Berlin – US support for the Israeli government and its actions is as strong as ever.[1] Hammad’s initial lecture was organized by the Society of Fellows and the Heyman Center for the Humanities and marked twenty years since the passing of Edward W. Said, a Palestinian-American literary critic and theorist. Isabella Hammad is a British-Palestinian writer who has published two novels – The Parisian and Enter Ghost – along with numerous short stories. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Two years after the memorial gathering, BBC reports: “the world’s leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.”[2] Indeed, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) passed a three-page resolution on 31 August 2025 stating that Israel’s actions fit the legal criteria defined in the UN convention on genocide.[3]Coincidentally, “IAGS Resolution on the Situation in Gaza” begins with the phrase “Recognising that”, before listing Israel’s intentional attacks against civilians in Gaza and accusing the settler-colonial state of methodical and extensive war crimes and crimes against humanity.[4] Recognizing the Stranger questions this moment of “anagnorisis as a movement from ignorance to knowledge” and demands that another act follow it.[5] In the creative review below, I approach Hammad’s theoretical ruminations through the prism of a 1958 semi-fictional film titled Mamluki – the story of two young men who are abducted from a Georgian village and sold into slavery, only to end up as soldiers on opposing sides during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.[6] Pairing the film with Hammad’s work, I focus on four major themes: writing and existing in the middle, transnationalism, the limited perspective of subjectivity, and finally, the act of recognizing the stranger and what must come after. When discussing her writing process for the lecture, Hammad shares, “And then I decided after all that I preferred to start in the middle, and more specifically that I wanted to talk about the middle of narratives – their turning points.”[7]So that is where I will also begin. Mamluki gains its title from the Arabic, meaning ‘one who is owned’ and explores the 18th century history of Safavid and Ottoman Empires kidnapping young people from the Caucasus and selling the men as soldiers. In decades to come, many of these foreign slaves gained political power and became part of the ruling elite.[8] The film’s protagonists are young friends – Khvicha and Gocha – who grow up in a small Georgian village. The mid-point of the film sees both children at the Istanbul Slave Market, happy to be reunited after being abducted on separate occasions.[9] Hammad muses on these occasions in narratives and lives, on human existence as that of always being in the middle. “Generations continue to be born, and we experience neither total apocalypse nor a happily-ever-after with any collective meaning beyond the endings of individual lives”, she writes.[10] Humanness considered from a collective point of view is constantly perhaps-about-to-change. Khvicha and Gocha are perpetually at the slave market, their fates soon to be decided. “Yet this narrative sense remains with us”, Hammad continues, “flickering like a ghost through the revisions of postmodernism: we hope for resolution, or at least we hope that retrospectively what felt like a crisis will turn out to have been a turning point.”[11] Arguably, it is as a response to this forever-middle that we create art, write novels, make films. Hammad draws inspiration from Sylvia Wynter’s description of the novel as a revolutionary form, “in essence a question mark.”[12] Writing, for Hammad, seems to be an active acceptance of the middle position, a place from which to ask questions and hope to make sense. Khvicha and Gocha’s joy of meeting again, however, is short-lived as one is sold to an older Mameluke from Egypt and the other to a Venetian merchant. In the years to follow, these protagonists struggle to integrate into their new surroundings, an experience which migrants are intimately familiar with. In many ways, they succeed, becoming high-ranking officials in their respective militaries. Here, characters try to forget the ‘otherness’ within. It is this assimilation that leads them to fight on opposite sides of a war. According to Hammad, a remedy for this type of migrant experience can be found in Said’s definition of Palestinianism. She writes: Palestinianism was for Said a condition of chronic exile, exile as agony but also as ethical position. To remain aloof from the group while honoring one’s organic ties to it; to exist between loneliness and alignment, remaining always a bit of a stranger; to resist the resolution of the narrative, the closing of the circle; to keep looking, to not feel too at home.[13] This can be a tall order for those who seek a sense of belonging, but Hammad argues that in today’s transnational world, with “vast population transfers, of refugees, exiles, expatriates and immigrants”, we can embrace our “diasporic, wandering, unresolved, cosmopolitan consciousness.”[14] Here, Said and Hammad are describing themselves – transnational individuals, but also referring to the non-Zionist Jews and anyone who is of “irremediably diasporic, unhoused character.”[15] So, instead of seeking total belonging, Hammad – through Said – offers a reversal of recognition: an understanding of the familiar as strange and a dismantling of fixed identity.[16] Then, through this ethical positioning in exile, Hammad claims, we can find the particular power of subjectivity, or perhaps what Sylvia Wynter terms the “gaze from below.”[17] For Wynter, the limited, oppressed, exilic positioning of a subject can form a basis for new imaginings, new ways of creating the world. At times, this rootedness in subjectivity is also a way of exposing the instability of knowledge. For example, Hammad writes, “In Joyce’s stories, the epiphanic moment is not usually a moment of understanding, however, but one that introduces a shift of perspective. A kind of partial turn.”[18] Wynter calls this a turn to face the illusory character of humanness and the acknowledgement that the divide between self/other is manufactured.[19] Even more, realising the limits of partial understanding or coming to terms with being wrong when confronted with art is what Hammad considers a “deeply pleasurable” experience.[20] In the final scenes of Mamluki , Khvicha – now wrapped in a different name, clothing and language – mortally wounds Gocha – also shrouded in a different name, clothing and language. As Gocha falls, he utters his last cry in Georgian, prompting Khvicha to recognise his childhood friend. In shock but also with a sense of inevitability, Khvicha abandons the fight and sits in the middle of a battle, holding Gocha’s lifeless body. A voice-over speaks the most iconic lines of the film – “Neither one was an Egyptian nor a Venetian. Both were hapless Georgia’s children.”[21] And then… what happens then? Hammad makes her major claim: Recognition is a kind of knowing that should incur the responsibility to act for it to have any value beyond personal epiphanies, or appeasing the critics of the one doing the recognizing. Great effort is required to ensure that such a moment marks the middle of the story, and not the finale. Another act must follow.[22] Mamluki – made during the Soviet occupation with a limited budget – gives viewers a recognition scene and, through the tragic finale, hints at the fact that mere kinship cannot keep one man from killing another. But it’s also a flawed piece, filled with uncritical conceptions of nationalism. As Hammad explains, recognition – the act of knowing the thing you knew all along but did not want to confront – is not enough. Now that the world has turned, what will we do? After all, “Individual moments of recognition are repeatedly overwhelmed by the energy of a political establishment that tells the onlooker: this is not what it looks like. It is too complicated to understand. Look away.”[23] Recognition scenes are bloody in Mamluki and in our real lives. How many must pay the price for us – those who are not on the battlefield – to admit that which we already know? Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative is written from the middle – middle of a life, of a genocide, of agony. Hammad believes that this middle ground is a more truthful place to speak from.[24] Throughout the text, she contemplates transnationalism and an intentional lack of belonging, as well as partial subjectivities and what must follow recognition. The death toll in Gaza is rising as I type this. Hammad calls on her readers to not give in. “Be like the Palestinians in Gaza”, she writes, “Look them in the face. Say: that’s me!”[25] I am neither Egyptian, nor from Venice but that’s me! That’s me! That’s me! [1] Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative (New York: Black Cat, 2024)., 24. [2] Emir Nader, “Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza, World’s Leading Experts Say,” BBC News, September 1, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o. [3] “IAGS Resolution on the Situation in Gaza,” Genocide Scholars, August 31, 2025, https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS-Resolution-on-Gaza-FINAL.pdf. [4] Ibid. [5] Hammad, 8. [6] Davit Rondeli, Mamluki , film (Georgia: Georgia-Film, 1958). [7] Hammad, 4. [8] Daniel Crecelius and Gotcha Djaparidze. “Relations of the Georgian Mamluks of Egypt with Their Homeland in the Last Decades of the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient , Vol. 45, No. 3 (2002), 320–341. [9] Yvonne J. Seng, “Fugitives and Factotums: Slaves in Early Sixteenth-Century Istanbul,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 39, no. 2 (1996): 136–69. [10] Hammad, 5. [11] Ibid. [12] Ibid., 6. [13] Ibid., 22. [14] Ibid., 21 [15] Ibid. [16] Ibid. [17] Sylvia Wynter, “The Ceremony Found: Towards the Autopoetic Turn/Overturn, Its Autonomy of Human Agency and Extraterritoriality of (Self-)Cognition,” in Black Knowledges/Black Struggles: Essays in Critical Epistemology , ed. Jason R. Ambroise and Sabine Broeck (Liverpool University Press, 2015), 207. [18] Hammad, 14. [19] Wynter, 242. [20] Hammad, 18. [21] Rondeli, Mamluki . [22] Hammad, 20. [23] Ibid., 11. [24] Ibid., 22. [25] Ibid., 28. References Crecelius, Daniel and Gotcha Djaparidze. “Relations of the Georgian Mamluks of Egypt with Their Homeland in the Last Decades of the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient , Vol. 45, No. 3 (2002), 320–341. Hammad, Isabella. Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative . New York: Black Cat, 2024. “IAGS Resolution on the Situation in Gaza.” Genocide Scholars, August 31, 2025. https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS-Resolution-on- Gaza-FINAL.pdf. Nader, Emir. “Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza, World’s Leading Experts Say.” BBC News, September 1, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o. Rondeli, Davit. Mamluki . Film. Georgia: Georgia-Film, 1958. Seng, Yvonne J. “Fugitives and Factotums: Slaves in Early Sixteenth-Century Istanbul.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 39, no. 2 (1996): 136–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3632618. Wynter, Sylvia. “The Ceremony Found: Towards the Autopoetic Turn/Overturn, Its Autonomy of Human Agency and Extraterritoriality of (Self-)Cognition.” Essay. In Black Knowledges/Black Struggles: Essays in Critical Epistemology , edited by Jason R. Ambroise and Sabine Broeck, 184– 252. Liverpool University Press, 2015.

Medea, Medes, Marjane and Me: Reflections on colonialism, war, and migration in Marjane Satrapi’s 'Persepolis' While reading Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, three major questions emerge. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? by Ninutsa Nadirashvili 23 July 2025 Medea, Medes, Marjane and Me: Reflections on colonialism, war, and migration in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Between the years of 2000 and 2003, Marjane Satrapi published a quartet of autobiographical comics about growing up in Iran, experiencing the 1979 revolution and dealing with its aftermath. Once translated into English and combined into a two-volume work, it became Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . Centuries earlier, in 431 B.C., Euripides – tragedian of classical Athens – produced a trilogy of plays.[1] Medea – the only surviving work – is often summarized simply as the story of a woman who murdered her two children to make her husband suffer.[2] Yet, like all women, Medea had a complex history of her own before, during and after her marriage to Jason, a prominent hero in Greek mythology. In some ways, just like Marjane’s protagonist, Medea presents a fascinating case study of how conquest, war, and migration can affect an individual; how they can erase our comfortable notions of home, belonging and safety. In Euripides’ text, Medea laments: Let it go! What profit in staying alive? No country, no home, no way to turn from evil. I made a mistake when I abandoned my homeland, trusting in the words of a Greek man. Now he will pay me justice, gods willing.[3] My personal interest in Medea is because I was born in Georgia. In the accounts of her myth, Medea lives in Kolkheti[4] – a very real polity, active between the 13th and 1st centuries B.C., that is considered as the first Georgian kingdom.[5] After being put under a love spell by the gods, Medea assists Jason in getting the Golden Fleece, betraying her family and kingdom in the process, and sails away with him, eventually settling in Corinth. There, after ten years of marriage, Jason decides to abandon his wife and marry the local king’s daughter. Though retellings differ, Euripides has Medea murder her two children as revenge against her disloyal husband.[6] After this, she flees Corinth and, according to Herodotus, ends up in the Iranian plateau among the Aryans who, in her honour, eventually change their name to Medes.[7] So, in one version of history, a Georgian princess, tricked, taken and then abandoned, spends the last years of her life on the same land that will later give birth to Marjane Satrapi, who, in turn, gives life to Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . Persepolis , like Euripides’ play, is the story of one woman. Marjane is only ten when revolutionaries sweep through Iran, collectively devolving into an oppressive regime upheld by religious fanaticism. This eventually leads to a war between Iran and Iraq, forcing Marjane’s parents to send their daughter away. Marjane spends nearly a decade in Austria, lost and aimless, eventually ending up on the street. Unable to go on, she returns to Iran only to become severely depressed, even attempting suicide. Here, she echoes Medea again, writing, “I was a Westerner in Iran. An Iranian in the West. I had no identity.”[8] In other words, “No country, no home, no way to turn from evil.”[9] Migration – especially one that is forced – forever alters the migrant’s position from an “insider” to someone in the in-between. This is so painful that both women are driven to extremes. Understanding her survival from the suicide attempt as a miracle, Marjane obtains a degree in graphic design, marries, divorces, and finally decides to leave for Europe again – understanding that, in her mother’s words, “You are a free woman. The Iran of today is not for you.”[10] While reading Satrapi’s work, three major questions emerged for me. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? The answers, simply put, are: everyone, no, and yes. Still, I would like to delve deeper into Marjane’s story and explore these questions while keeping the author, myself, and Medea in mind. In 1980, Marjane’s father hoped that after centuries of “tyranny and submission”, the revolution was finally waking Iranians up.[11] Since Persepolis is a graphic novel, this statement is followed with a visual depiction of Iranian history: first, subjugated by their own emperors, then the Arabs, followed by Mongolians and finally, the modern imperialists of the global West. Here, the first set of questions come to mind – Who can colonise, who can be colonised and who benefits from the claim that this must be an unchanging dynamic? For example, while Satrapi’s Iran is presented as a colonised territory, the nation where I was born considers Iran a coloniser. In the 4thand 5th centuries, Persians controlled the Georgian Kingdom of Iberia, only to be replaced by Arabian tribes.[12] Ten centuries later, Persians re-conquered Georgia, ruling over the country until 1800s, only ceding power to the Russian Empire which continues to oppress Georgians and currently occupies approximately 20% of our territory.[13] Persepolis is a novel that understands the possibility within all nations to become the “evil” that Medea has no way to turn from. This is why Satrapi begins to tell the country’s 2,500-year story by pointing out that the people were subjugated by their own emperors – the same ones who demanded expansion to foreign lands. This is also why, when Marjane is in Austria, she comes to the realisation that “In every religion, you find the same extremists.”[14] This is why, to Marjane’s old Iranian schoolmates, “making themselves up and wanting to follow Western ways was an act of resistance.”[15] Satrapi, by allowing for her personal story to be the focal point of the novel, manages to get this point across. Everyone can be an oppressor, and anyone can be oppressed. The only group that benefits from the establishment of rigid rules around colonisation is the one that decides to become a conqueror next as it makes it easy to claim innocence that way: “Us? No, never! We’ve been the victims before; how could we?” Empires obliterate others and themselves, there are no set guidelines for who can be the “bad guy.” After all, Jason is supposed to be a hero; and yet he fails at it spectacularly. Once Persepolis proposes that anyone can turn into a tyrant, the novel shifts its focus to the consequences of tyranny – mainly war. In a chapter titled “The Water Cell”, Marjane is told a story that is eerily like one I have heard from my own mother. The reader finds out that Marjane’s grandfather was the son of Iran’s last emperor, subject to frequent threats, and jailed on several occasions.[16]In one of the illustrations, we see a young girl (Marjane’s mother) opening the door to police officers looking for her dad. This is how my mother’s story starts as well, though she rarely tells it. After she opens the door, her father – my grandfather – is taken away by police. His crime was nothing more than having the same last name as a high-ranking politician who opposed the government. This type of intimidation can only foster political unrest, eventually culminating in a war. Marjane and I were both 10 when war took us by surprise, as it always does.[17] In her novel, Satrapi highlights the direct nature of violence, especially when it reaches proportions of such magnitude. The writer tells us about a classmate who writes a eulogy to her father, the refugees who flood Tehran from the South, the maid whose son is given a golden key and told to die for his country in exchange for paradise.[18]When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, our nanny came to my mother in panic because her son had just been drafted. I remember vividly that she worried about him leaving before dinner, how they had taken him in a hurry, and she had only found time to put a bar of chocolate in his pocket. Satrapi’s focus on the fates of individual citizens answers the second question – No, war is never anything but personal. So then, once Medea has betrayed her father, started a war in several cities, and killed her own children, can she return to Kolkheti? After all, Persepolis is in ruins, and I have not been truly fluent in Georgian since the age of thirteen. We will never know how much of Euripides’ play is based on facts, but I would argue that the act of returning is entirely mythological. In Austria, Marjane denies her heritage, refuses to watch the news about Iran, and tries desperately to fit in.[19] Instead, she is repeatedly discriminated against, tokenised, isolated, and ultimately ends up on the street with no one to care for her. Soon after, unable to assimilate because much like returning, assimilation is a myth, she flies to Iran. She writes, “After four years living in Vienna, here I am back in Tehran. From the moment I arrived at Mehrabad Airport and caught sight of the first customs agent, I immediately felt the oppressive air of my country.”[20] Welcome home, indeed. In chapters to follow, Marjane compares her city to a cemetery, is labelled a whore for having sexual experiences in Austria, discovers the duality of revolutionary men who preach about freedom while refusing to let their wives speak.[21] If Herodotus is telling the truth, Medea only goes home as a conqueror. Meanwhile, Marjane is barely recognisable to her own parents. As for me, after living in Georgia for a year during my twenties, I know I will spend the rest of my life trying to find the same feeling of “home” that I had at thirteen, only to fail. (Though it was not always good, I once belonged to that place, and it belonged to me). There is no rest for the migrants. And belongings get left behind. Then again, as Satrapi points out on the final page of the novel, freedom has a price.[22] Bibliography Euripides. Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation . Translated by Diane Rayor. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Herodotus. Herodotus . Translated by A. D. Godley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920. Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . London: Vintage, 2008. Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia . London: Reaktion Books, 2019. [1] Euripides, Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation , trans. Diane Rayor (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), xiv. [2] Ibid., xiii. [3] Ibid., 37. [4] Or Colchis. [5] Ibid., 69. [6] Ibid., xiii. [7] Herodotus, Herodotus , trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), 7.61. [8] Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return (London: Vintage, 2008)., 118. [9] Euripides, Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation , 37. [10] Ibid., 343. [11] Ibid., 11. [12] Donald Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia (London: Reaktion Books, 2019). [13] Ibid. [14] Satrapi, 180. [15] Satrapi, 261. [16] Ibid., 18-25. [17] Ibid., 81. [18] Ibid., 86 – 99. [19] Ibid., 157-246. [20] Ibid., 248. [21] Ibid., 248 -339. [22] Ibid., 343.

Review of 'White is for Witching' by Helen Oyeyemi Helen Oyeyemi’s 'White is for Witching' combines elements of the gothic tradition, vampire stories and haunted house stories to craft a narrative which probes issues of xenophobia and racism in contemporary British society. The novel follows Miranda, a young woman with vampiric qualities, as a sentient house intervenes in her life to protect, control and possess her. by Séamus O’Kane 23 April 2025 Review: Oyeyemi, Helen. White is for Witching. Helen Oyeyemi found literary success early. She wrote her prodigious debut, The Icarus Girl (2005), and secured a publisher while she was still in secondary school. The years since then have seen her produce a tremendous output: seven more novels, two plays and one short story collection. Born in Nigeria and raised in London, Oyeyemi’s nomadic trajectory has taken her to Paris, Berlin, New York, and, finally, Prague, where she now resides. White is for Witching (2009) is Oyeyemi’s third novel and garnered her the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award in 2010, placing her in the company of such luminaries as Doris Lessing, Angela Carter and Zadie Smith. White is for Witching opens with a cryptic and disorienting prelude as its protagonist, Miranda, lies already dead, with competing accounts of how this occurred. These segments set the stage for the narrative perspectives that make up the novel: Miranda herself, Eliot (her twin), Ore (her friend and partner), and the house itself, 29 Barton Road. The house is in Dover, a coastal town in England which serves as a major port to Calais, and therefore acts as a main entry point into England for many migrants and refugees. This setting allows Oyeyemi to examine contemporary issues of racism and xenophobia in her setting of England in the year 2000. Much like the welcoming façade of the house, the locals of Dover are superficially friendly but harbour a deep-seated racism. Refugees from Kosovo are stabbed, with Miranda’s twin, Eliot, blaming other refugees for the crime. Chinese migrants die in a truck trying to cross the border. There are protests outside the immigrant detention centre after a man commits suicide. When Miranda and Eliot’s mother, Lily, inherited the house, their father, Luc, persuaded his wife to turn the seven-bedroom Devon home into a B&B. Upon moving into the house, Miranda develops the same eating disorder which afflicted her great-grandmother. This disorder, pica, causes her to constantly chew on chalk and plastic, spurning regular food unless she makes a sustained effort to eat, usually to please her parents. When Miranda and Eliot’s mother dies, shot dead at a polling station in Haiti, Miranda finds herself in a psychiatric clinic for six months. Her memory of the events is already untrustworthy as she cannot recall how she got there. Consequently, an ambiguity persists when events are recounted from Miranda’s perspective. Physically weak from her eating disorder, her perception of reality is also unreliable, meaning that it is difficult to separate the supernatural events of the novel from Miranda’s own hallucinations. The house itself often casts aspersions on the reliability of Miranda and Eliot’s stories, whilst slyly suggesting multiple possibilities of its own. When recalling the fate of one of Miranda’s predecessors, the house presents two competing stories: she could have been strangled to death or allowed to reside within the house’s walls until she reached middle age. As the novel progresses, we learn more about the house, including the origins of its sentience, beginning at the time of Miranda’s great-grandmother. Thereafter, the house’s desire to “protect” the female members of the family becomes a corrupted, unwanted inheritance, as its desire manifests as possession and control, seeking to deny them any agency or autonomy. Miranda’s eating disorder is implied to be part of this supernatural inheritance as it afflicts subsequent generations who are connected to the house. As part of this disorder, she symbolically internalises chalk, connecting to the novel’s larger themes of racialisation and whiteness. This repeated act not only allows the house to symbolically extend its xenophobia beyond its physical boundaries, but it also weakens Miranda, causing her to become reliant on the house, and foreshadows the novel’s ending where the ultimate aims of the house’s idea of protection becomes clear. One of the novel’s focalisers is Ore, a woman with a Nigerian mother and white adoptive parents, who strikes up a friendship and romance with Miranda in Cambridge in some of the novel’s most touching scenes. Her perspective gives an insight into the discomfort and impostor syndrome of an elite academic environment. Furthermore, we see how Ore is subjected to the casual, mocking racism of her white cousins, who read aloud sections of leaflets distributed by the fascist British National Party. These scenes further add to the various manifestations of racism within the novel, emphasising how the xenophobia that the reader encounters is not simply a supernatural curse that is generations old, but a contemporary reality which can personally impact characters even in a familial context. In White is for Witching , neither the family nor the home, both traditionally associated with safety, can provide refuge. Oyeyemi’s novel subverts the trope of the monstrous, racialised Other, turning it back onto the white, colonial culture of England (indeed, the house has a fondness for the glory days of Rule Britannia). The uncanny is now the British family home. Sade, the Yoruba housekeeper, uses her culture’s charms and superstitions to counter the house’s malevolence. Ore, meanwhile, recalls the Nigerian folktale of the soucouyant, a shape-shifting old woman who feeds on the souls of her victims. She projects her understanding of this tale onto her experience of the haunted house, allowing her to defend herself against it. Miranda’s eating disorder leaves her pale and thin, visually recalling the vampire, a metaphor for the parasitic, colonial draining of resources and, indeed, her relationship with Ore leaves her lover in a similarly weakened state. A kissing scene towards the novel’s climax also heightens the novel’s supernatural elements and further troubles the boundaries between perception and reality. Drawing on Gothic tropes, Oyeyemi’s novel brilliantly conveys a sense of unease, foreboding, creeping uncertainty and inescapable decline throughout its narrative. Oyeyemi’s pages list various authors of dark fairytales and gothic stories which presumably shaped her writing, including the Brothers Grimm, E. T. A. Hoffman, and Sheridan LeFanu. However, it is the influence of Edgar Allen Poe which is felt most strongly in the novel. Humorously, one scene features Miranda and Eliot discuss how they could easily deal with the events of a Poe story. Indeed, one could view the novel as a reworking of The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), with its sentient home tied to a doomed bloodline. Oyeyemi’s story, like Poe’s, hints that there is an incestuous connection between the twins. Miranda possesses many characteristics shared by the Usher twins: she suffers from a mental illness which manifests itself physically, she has uncanny, pale white skin, and soft, ethereal hair. Like Roderick Usher, her fate is inseparable from the home. The reader is left to question whether she has control of her own actions. Upon the novel’s conclusion, it is natural to return once again to the prelude, now armed with the knowledge of what happens to Miranda and able to slice through its disorienting opacity. Yet, despite everything they have read, the reader will wonder about her fate long after the book is closed. This encouragement of circularity mimics the novel’s own themes, triggering many questions and unsettling any easy resolution. Although there are scattered, individual acts of resistance to the house and its xenophobia, it ultimately achieves its goal, raising the question of whether it is possible to break the cycle of victimhood and the continuity of a colonial past. Will the house, and by extension, the racist spectre of empire, continue to haunt British society forever?