ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a particular definition of displacement which arises from several contemporary literary texts. Displacement can be understood as an experience which puts the meaning, security and reliability of home into question in various ways. The novel forms a panoramic view of displacement-as-homelessness which stretches between the past and the present, and in which contemporary displacement is shown to be connected with the events of colonial history, and post-colonial violence: these are intersecting stories which, the novel insists, should be read together. The concept of ‘multiple displacement’ has resonance beyond the Palestinian case, and it is useful to think about the term in relation to Dust, which is set in Kenya. The chapter focuses on novels which unflinchingly explore the costs of displacement, but which also defend the significance of movement and the importance of encounters across difference, forged in a situation of homelessness. The language of home, homelessness and longing is repeated in Selene and Langston Hugh’s story.
