Towards a Decolonial Uncanny: Reconfiguring the Ineffable in Anna Kim's ‘Greenland’ Novel Anatomie einer Nacht (2012)

Anna Kim's novel Anatomie einer Nacht [Anatomy of a Night], set in Greenland and focused on the deaths by suicide of eleven Greenlanders in the space of one night, seems to consolidate the author's reputation for writing about 'düstere Themen' [gloomy themes]. 1 The morbid theme of mass suicides evokes the liminal experience of death which in conjunction with the other key motifs of 'the unhomely', 'das Einsame' [isolation], 'Stille' [quietness or silence], and darkness ensures that the novel engages with perennial themes that we associate with Sigmund Freud's notion of the uncanny from his 1919 essay. 2 To date the novel has been 1 See for instance Peter Hamm, 'In Grönland hört alles auf', Die Zeit, Issue 1/2013, 27