Woolley, Agnes (2012) ‘Something blurred in her?’: imagining hospitality in Graham Swift's The Light of Day. Textual Practice 26 (3), pp. 449-465. ISSN 0950-236X.
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Abstract
This article explores the complex position of Kristina, a refugee, in Graham Swift's 2003 novel The Light of Day. She has been overlooked in criticism of the novel, which has tended to focus on the narrator George. I argue that Kristina, in her role as both proximal and distant to the text, allows us to ask pressing questions about the nature of hospitality in relation to the contingent and unstable position of asylum seekers and refugees within British national space. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's work on hospitality, I argue that the novel's self-conscious mode of narrative expression both situates and problematises the imagination as a potential space of accommodation for asylum narratives.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Feb 2018 15:25 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Aug 2025 08:27 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/21159 |
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