In 1984 Czech writer Milan Kundera published his essay 'The Tragedy of Central Europe' in The
New York Review of Books which established the framework for disputes about the space 'between
East and West' for the following 30 years. Even today the echo of those debates is still
audible in spatial narratives. Discussing the way in which literary figures are positioned
within new hierarchies such as gender class or ethnicity this volume shows how the space of
the imagined Central Europe has been de- and reconstructed. Special attention is paid to the
role of the past in shaping contemporary spatial discourse.
