Jonas Hassen Khemiri and the Swedish Novel: Autofiction, Intertextuality, and Postmigrant Melancholy

Abstract

This dissertation interrogates questions of belonging and identity in Swedish author Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s novels in relation to autofiction, intertextuality, and postmigrant melancholy. The dissertation situates the novels in postcolonial and cultural studies, and theories of affect and melancholia, and investigates how the representation of transcultural identities in contemporary postmigrant literature relates to the current discourse on Swedishness as whiteness. By using the term postmigrant literature, the dissertation shifts the discussion away from racialized categories of authorship to argue for the salience of other categories of analysis, such as genre, gender, and transnationalism. The dissertation offers an innovative approach to Khemiri’s authorship by arguing that his novels employ a multitude of narrative strategies, which convey a resistance to immigrant tropes and racialized readings. I argue that these strategies destabilize Khemiri’s position as a postmigrant writer and places his work in conversation with the Swedish literary canon.