South Africa-sur-Nemunas1 : Transnational Hinterlands in Dan Jacobson’s Heshel’s Kingdom

Abstract

The paper investigates the representation of Central Europe and its hinterlands in selected works by 20th-century South  African writers. It pays special attention  to Dan Jacobson’s Heshel’s Kingdom about Jacobson’s travel to Lithuania in  search of the writer’s “middle-European” patrimony. Drawing on previously  unpublished archival records, the study  argues that Jacobson’s book merges  Central European hinterlands (their histories, identities, landscapes) with South  African ones in a radical act of re-mapping both areas. The paper also insists  on recognising a distinctive mode of  conflating Central Europe and South Africa. This hinternational poetics annuls the existing imperial cartography  and  builds transnational connections between different hinterlands and  their pasts. Additionally, the article demonstrates  how the need to “unlearn”  imperial history allows for a geographic/spatial overlap between the “heart  of the country”  and the “core of Europe,” as well as creation of a network of  transnational solidarity and implication across nations and  ethnicities.