Linda Grant's Dys-Chrony: Interwoven Temporalities in A Stranger City (2019)

This article argues that Linda Grant’s BrexLit novel A Stranger City (2019) foregrounds interwoven temporalities in ways that demonstrate the author’s ‘dys-chronic’ relationship with her own time. It draws on Giorgio Agamben’s insight into the contemporary and incorporates different conceptualisations and understandings of time and temporalities in order to explore the novel’s structure, its treatment of the central character’s ethics in terms of how to live and act, and its take on the complexities of nostalgia and haunting memories of the imperial past and the legacy of World War II. The article suggests that although Grant focuses on the darkness of her own time, manifested in Brexit and xenophobic responses to what the novel terms the nation’s ‘unwanted population,’ A Stranger City locates cracks of light in the author’s temporally immersed characters’ ways of being and thinking in the contemporary period.@font-face{font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:swiss;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-469750017 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";margin:0cm;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}div.