ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that despite Philip Tew's focus upon the 'traumatological novel', the cycle is emerging as a particularly apt literary form to convey such an aesthetic in politically turbulent times. Trauma studies today is dominated by a body of cultural and literary criticism that has stemmed, largely, from Cathy Caruth's conceptualizations of trauma and its (potential) narrativization; while Caruth's conclusions have been contested, her writing functions still as a point of reference and convergence for various cultural conceptualizations of trauma. The constituent stories of Hotel World act as a testing ground for various narrative responses to trauma. Not only do they testify to Caruth's symptomatology and denial of transcendence, but they question, too, her insistence on ineffability by playing out a range of alternative responses that gesture towards possible recuperation through both performativity and testimony.
