ABSTRACT
This chapter moves us away from the Australian continent to explore representations of belonging, diaspora, and return. Issues of diasporic experience and second generation alienation and belonging animate Christos Tsiolkas’ journey back to Greece and the European continent in Dead Europe (2005), and Christopher Koch’s return to Ireland and its song and storytelling traditions in The Many-Coloured Land (2002). To situate these texts within a global phenomenon of roots tourism and the return to ancestral lands, we draw from research in the field of cultural geography. Discussing these studies in relation to the Australian and international contexts of Tsiolkas and Koch, we explore the specifically postcolonial issues around return to what Salman Rushdie has called ‘Imaginary Homelands’, and address how issues of diaspora and belonging have affected post-war migrants and their descendants. With close attention to these narratives of return, we examine how family stories are used to bridge and/or sever our links with the origins of the family.
