Literary Aesthetics of Migration: Lists and Literature in Lena Gorelik’s Die Listensammlerin (2013) [Literarische Ästhetik der Migration. Listen und Literatur in Lena Goreliks Die Listensammlerin (2013)]

Abstract

This article explores the literary aesthetics of migration in Lena Gorelik’s Die Listensammlerin (The List Collector, 2013), emphasizing the interplay between personal lists and canonical literary works to illuminate the complexities of the migration experience. The fragmented and evolving lists function as mobile personal archives, preserving silenced family histories and acts of political resistance while subverting traditional narrative structures. At the same time, literary classics—including works by Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, and Soviet dissident writers—serve as a transnational and public force, shaping characters’ identities, political subjectivities, and imaginative escapes. By juxtaposing private and public realms, the novel blurs their boundaries, revealing how migration fractures yet simultaneously binds individual lives to larger cultural narratives. This article demonstrates how Gorelik’s novel interweaves one family’s transgenerational trauma under Soviet oppression and subsequent migration with the transformative potential of storytelling, which provides a space for refuge, agency, and self-expression.