Fragmented identities in Doron Rabinovici’s novel Ohnehin

Abstract

By examining Doron Rabinovici’s latest novel I intend to explore in this paper the multiple aspects of contemporary identity configurations. Published in 2004, Ohnehin leads its readers through the city of Vienna, which is portrayed as a mosaic of various identities. Centred on the emblematic Naschmarkt, Rabinovici’s novel depicts a multicultural social frame where apparently there is a symbiosis between Viennese inhabitants and several migrant minorities. This harmony, nonetheless, is only a misapprehension: as the individual stories of these men and women are told, the fragility of the immigrant community (legal and illegal) is revealed. Alongside the issue of immigrant’s shattered identity in post-war political and social contexts, Ohnehin develops another important question as far as post-Holocaust generations (Jewish and non-Jewish) are concerned. In reality the national-socialist past of the Austrian nation casts a shadow over a whole generation of individuals whose identity formation has been undoubtedly influenced by that overwhelming inheritance.