Jan Kjærstad

Abstract

When I first began to conceive of this project on the role of migration in post-World War II European literature, I wanted to include an author from my own part of the world—that is, Scandinavia. However, it soon became clear to me that the literatures of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were not exactly teeming with migrant authors, and the few names that could be categorized as such were household names neither on the world market nor even among their respective national readerships.

The journey creates us. We become the frontiers we cross. […] The frontier is an elusive line, visible and invisible, physical and metaphorical, amoral and moral. […] To cross a frontier is to be transformed.

—Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line