Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates the wider significance, in the German context, of the quest for attachment as a way of recuperating a stable identity in a globalised and yet fractured world. It draws on a wide range of theoretical ideas from a variety of different fields including humanist geography migration, memory, and cultural studies; psychology; feminist theory; and German and Anglo-American literary scholarship. The book explores various ways in which a sense of belonging is being articulated and understood in contemporary Germany. It analyses the impact of supermodernity in works by Angelika Overath, Juli Zeh, and Florian lilies. This shift in the geographical understanding of the contemporary experience of place has affinities with how place and placed identity tend to be understood in contemporary German literature.