University of Cambridge
MPhil research project: Magic realist fiction in the representation of the war in contemporary young adult fiction.
Supervisor: Professor Louise Joy
Scholarship awarded by Open Society Foundation, London
This Master’s research project explores the role of magic realist young adult fiction in children’s education about wars and genocides. The study provides a guide to the range of ideas concerning magic realism and its role in the artistic expression of and response to the complexity of trauma in children’s literature. I engage with the debates around the challenges in the representation of World War II and the Holocaust in young adult fiction, particularly the issues of language and inexpressibility, the simplification of history, and the link between past and present.
Further, I explore the ways in which magic realist narrative expands literary possibilities in the portrayal of traumatic history: through indirect representation of trauma and stimulation of the reader’s emotional intensity in the perception of the plot and how it appeals to the young reader. As a case study, I take the young adult war novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, proposing it as an example of inverted magic realism, a concept which I explain and analyze in the thesis.