Barbed Wire Fever: On Seeking and Providing Refuge (Creative Non-Fiction)

Barbed Wire Fever: On Seeking and Providing Refuge is a work of creative nonfiction that explores my father’s memories of his years as a Holocaust survivor and refugee during the Second World War, my memory of how my father tried to articulate those memories, and how non-refugees responded to and shaped my father’s narrative. The first section of the thesis is a critical essay titled ‘Out of the Past: The Safety of Genre, the Subversion of Genre’ that addresses the expectations of ‘Holocaust literature’. It looks at works of non-fiction and fiction about ‘difficult’ subjects that both employ the rules of genre and subvert them, and it is an explanation of why I am rejecting the limitations of Holocaust narratives. The next three sections of creative non-fiction employ established literary genres to convey my father’s experiences as a refugee and survivor. ‘Once Upon a Time’ uses the language and structure of fairytales and is about how I understood my father’s story as a child. ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ is a homage to hardboiled prose film noir. It examines my family’s reparations testimony through a conversation with a German friend who is also a former conflict reporter. ‘If You Can Bend Space’ is about the aftermath of my father’s years as a refugee and my relationship with him when he has succumbed to dementia and follows the logic of time travel. All of the chapters are intertextual, addressing readers’ expectations of a story about a Holocaust survivor, and also what they expect of the conventions of each genre. Each section also alludes to the relationship between genre and social structures and to the historical events that gave birth to each style of storytelling.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ph.D.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

PhD thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Westminster

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Mannheim, Linda

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Copley, H.
• Bond, L.
• Sprio, Margherita

Identifier

oai:westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk:x5qq2

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk:x5qq2