Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 15, 3 (2023) 135–149
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0031
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.
Keywords: refugee literature, Anna Vörös, islandment, language, identity, in-betweenness
SAPIENTIA HUNGARIAN UNIVERSITY OF TRANSYLVANIA
The Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania is the independent university of the Hungarian community in Romania, which aims at providing education to the members of our community and performing scientific research on a high professional level.
Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania,
Scientia Publishing House
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae
RO 400112 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Str. Matei Corvin nr. 4.
Email: acta @ acta.sapientia.ro
