<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Anna Vörös’s collection of short stories, <italic>Vadoma</italic> (2022), offers a completely novel perspective on refugees in contemporary Hungarian literature. The collection focuses on Vadoma, a young refugee girl of Syrian origin, who is the first-person narrator of most of the short stories. The reader can follow the young girl’s path from Aleppo to Budapest as she faces dilemmas and problems. The main issue of our hero is the fact that she is stuck between two worlds, as her old life and city of origin do not exist anymore, but Budapest has yet to become her home. Her mother tongue and words are no longer enough to express her experiences, but she has not learnt a new language yet. Mariangelo Pallodino’s concept of “islandment”, which refers to landing without arrival, expresses Vadoma’s situation perfectly. The present study examines whether Anna Vörös’s short stories can be read in the context of refugee literature, and it looks at how the figure of the refugee appears in them. Special attention is paid to the themes of cultures, religions, languages, and the in-betweenness of identities.</p>
</abstract>

Anna Vörös’s collection of short stories, Vadoma (2022), offers a completely novel perspective on refugees in contemporary Hungarian literature. The collection focuses on Vadoma, a young refugee girl of Syrian origin, who is the first-person narrator of most of the short stories. The reader can follow the young girl’s path from Aleppo to Budapest as she faces dilemmas and problems. The main issue of our hero is the fact that she is stuck between two worlds, as her old life and city of origin do not exist anymore, but Budapest has yet to become her home. Her mother tongue and words are no longer enough to express her experiences, but she has not learnt a new language yet. Mariangelo Pallodino’s concept of “islandment”, which refers to landing without arrival, expresses Vadoma’s situation perfectly. The present study examines whether Anna Vörös’s short stories can be read in the context of refugee literature, and it looks at how the figure of the refugee appears in them. Special attention is paid to the themes of cultures, religions, languages, and the in-betweenness of identities.

Between Two Worlds

Department of Hungarian Language and Literature

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The Representation of Refugees in the Short Stories of Anna Vörös

Anna Vörös’s collection of short stories, Vadoma (2022), offers a completely novel perspective on refugees in contemporary Hungarian literature. The collection...

Between Two Worlds

Published Online: Dec 10, 2023

Page range: 135 - 149

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0031

Keywords
refugee literature, Anna Vörös, islandment, language, identity, in-betweenness

© 2023 Anikó Novák et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Between Two Worlds

Published Online: Dec 10, 2023

Page range: 135 - 149

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0031

Keywordsrefugee literature, Anna Vörös, islandment, language, identity, in-betweenness

© 2023 Anikó Novák et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
refugee literature, Anna Vörös, islandment, language, identity, in-betweenness