Andrea Tompa

The novel I will be working on refers both to a place (home) and a direction (back to). It is a story of those who left their home country. The narrator, a person in his/her late forties and a successful writer in her second home, returns for a class reunion. Two-thirds of the old classmates have scattered all around the world; some have built successful careers, some have become radical nationalists, while others drastically cut off all ties with the past. It is a story dealing with the past and the present, informed by a quest for understanding what “home” is, what emotions are associated with the place you call your home. Basic attitudes to one’s home will be modeled, ranging from nostalgia to disconnection and denial, from nationalism and denationalization. Immigration, nationalism, local and global identities are the main themes, and they will be examined in the complexity of their interconnectedness at different layers of time during the 20th and 21st centuries.