Border Policies between Sovereignty and the Movement of Goods (on Ádám Bodor’s The Sinistra Zone)

Abstract

Central European transformation is illustrated here through everyday scenes of border traffic in the Mukkerman chapter of Ádám Bodor’s novel Schutzgebiet Sinistra (1992). The narrated transit space serves as a symbolic representation of a potentially imminent societal transformation process. Various motifs cast both sides – or the actors of transformation (and those resisting it) – and their narratives in an ironic light. The analysis pays particular attention to the linguistic perforation and subversion of sovereign practices of the border regime within a fictional zone in the Romanian-Hungarian-Ukrainian borderlands during the 1980s.