“A caveman in a canal house”:The rejection of transnationalist biography in Hafid Bouazza’s A Bear in Fur Coat

Around the turn of the Millennium, the work of minority authors in the Netherlands was often expected to be an authentic expression of his or her culture and was often interpreted by literary critics as aiming to unmask Dutch racism towards that culture. Thus, authenticity and emancipation were expected to be cornerstones of the life work of such authors. Arguably, Hafid Bouazza, a popular Dutch author and public intellectual of Moroccan descent, has instead made the subversion of such expectiations the cornerstone of his life work. For this, the image of the barbarian is frequently evoked in... Mehr ...