ABSTRACT
This chapter explores literary representations of the city from the second half of the twentieth century to the present. Its arch rests on three thematic pillars: the wounded city, the imagined city, and the multicultural city. These pillars provide a context to explore thematically some of the urban representations in the vast terrain of city literature. Using Heinrich Böll’s novel The Silent Angel as a key text, the section on the wounded city examines literary representations of architectural and psychological ruination by looking at the urban landscape of post-World War II Europe, including literature written on the Balkan War of the 1990s. Imagined cities entail utopian visions that embody the desire for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II, as well as “corrective” dreams foregrounding underlying problems in European urban societies. In the last section, the multicultural city, resulting from mass migration and globalisation, is explored in novels that address its social and cultural diversity.
