Where is Home?: <i>Re-visioning “Kurdistan” and “Diaspora” in Kurdish novelistic discourse in Sweden</i>

Abstract

Employing textual and contextual analysis of three Kurdish novels, the aim of this article is to understand the way Kurdish characters have experienced their “home-land” through tracing the themes of displacement and exile, and to explore what kind of meanings and values are attributed to Sweden as the host country. Applying a conceptual framework based on “home”, “homeland” and “diaspora”, it aims to illuminate diasporic memory in relation to individual and collective pasts, and to depict the imaginary of “home-land”. In this sense, this article will argue that Kurds in the fictional narratives neither feel at “home” in their host country nor can they return to their homeland.