Secret contiguity, uncanny intimacy. Strangers and Others in Joanna Bator’s novel Piaskowa Góra

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the relations between Poles and Germans on the one hand, Poles and Polish Jews on the other after 1945 displayed in Joanna Bator’s novel Piaskowa Góra. It dwells upon the strategies of de-/construction of “strangers” and “others” as inclusive resp. exclusive categories of cultural difference, as well as on the novel’s relevance for Polish post mémoire-generation in the context of recent discussions about Jewish-Polish relations and the Shoah.