Multidirectional Memory in Navid Kermani’s Entlang den Gräben (2018) [Multidirektionales Gedächtnis in Navid Kermanis Entlang den Gräben (2018)]

Abstract

In his 2018 travelogue Entlang den Gräben. Eine Reise durch das östliche Europa bis nach Isfahan, Navid Kermani describes a journey from eastern Germany to Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Crimea, southern Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Iran. Kermani covers a large geographic area and travels in time, searching for his parents’ roots in Iran while traversing territories marked by century old conflicts and shifting borders. He describes many locations from a postmigrant and western perspective: as the son of Iranian exiles, he represents a minority within Germany, but travels to Eastern Europe as a westerner. The transnationalization and multidirectionality of Holocaust remembrance figure prominently in Kermani’s book, which is influenced by Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. Traveling east toward Iran, Kermani’s associations shift subtly from postmigrant German to Iranian perspectives. The “border” in its multi-layered meanings—as political borders between nations, literary borders between genres, and border crossing within literary theory—is an overarching theme in Entlang den Gräben.