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This article examines Jamal Mahjoub's 2003 novel Travelling with Djinns from a transcultural perspective. Drawing on Wolfgang Welsch's definition of transculturality, I argue that the road trip plays an integral role in how the novel maps 21st century Europe as a heterogeneous construct. While driving from Germany through France to Spain, the main character Yasin adopts a fluid understanding of identity, informed by his experience of being on the move. Simultaneously, the novel conceptualises the European continent as irrevocably shaped by its history of migration, relating the road trip to other historic experiences of travel, migration and exile, some – but not all – of which linked to Europe's colonial past. Extensive intertextual references also support the novel's central idea that cultural encounters have shaped Europe for centuries. Since transcultural exchanges tend to be an ever-growing phenomenon in the face of mass migration, globalisation and communication technology, Travelling with Djinns sets out to underscore the continent's transcultural condition as both historic and ongoing.
This article presents new directions of literary and media memory studies. It distinguishes between (1) the study of "traumatic pasts", i.e. representations of war and violence in literature and other media, (2) diachronic and intermedial approaches to "literary afterlives" and (3) recent insights into the inherent transculturality of memory and their consequences for literary and media studies. Keywords: cultural memory studies, literature and memory, media and memory, transcultural memory