The novels War and Turpentine (2013) by Stefan Hertmans, The Fig Tree (2016) by Goran Vojnović, Dreams of My Russian Summer (1995) by Andreï Makine and the work of Veronika Simoniti Ivana Before the Sea are contemporary novels linked through the central character of a grandchild who searches for his/her foundation through an extraordinary bond with his/her grandparents. The latter are defined by the experience of war, which is also passed on to the grandchildren through the post-memorial component of the works in question. The comparative analysis of the characteristics of the narratives, more specifically the narrators and focalization, the literary figures, time and place, and the linguistic and stylistic forms of the texts reveal a number of other similarities between the novels in focus. Using comparative, textual-analytical and interpretative methods, this master thesis identifies the fundamental determinants of the grandchild's character in contemporary Slovenian and foreign novels, which are presented through four strands of motifs and themes. The findings are supported by a theoretical introduction, which focuses on the definition of the contemporary novel and literary figures, postmemory, previous depictions of grandchildren and grandparents in literature, as well as chapters on the authors and the circumstances and themes of the novels under discussion, which are intended to contextualise them. In the results of the comparative analysis, which concludes the masters thesis, the main determinants of the grandchild's characters in the contemporary novels under discussion are the issue of war and the moral collapse of society, foreignness and alienation, storytelling and the strong desire to preserve the memory of their grandparents and the (collective) past.
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