Biliana Kourtasheva

Three extraordinary, disturbing novels from the first decade of 21st century: Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, 2666 by R. Bolano, Les Bienveillantes by J. Littell. Each of them focuses on mass violence and death and enacts the failure of literature to deal with the inexpressible. This conscious failure, I would argue, is the only chance to reject the ready clichés of fictional and sublime and to point at the ruins of humanity. My project is an examination of how literature confronts the traumas of Modernity and Postmodernity today when everything is broadcasted, yet artists get killed for drawings.