Deterritorializing Narrative Strategies of New Literatures in English: Andriana Ierodiaconou’s The Women’s Coffee Shop

Abstract

As one of the New Literatures in English, Cypriot Anglophone literature has only recently come to be the focus of literary researchers and scholars. This article deals with Andriana Ierodiaconou’s 2012 novel The Women’s Coffee Shop in the context of the New Literatures in English, starting from the theoretical and philosophical premises of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. While situating the novel within the framework of minor literatures and rhizomatic narratives, its main goal is to define and describe, through close reading, the narrative strategies that reflect and/or strengthen the deterritorializing effect as a key feature of a minor literature. To this effect, the article analyzes the figure of a deterritorialized narrator, characterization that oscillates between deterritorialization and reterritorialization, the narrative method of dreamwork and narrative modes that potentially create new territories, as well as the rhizomatic narrative gap and the open ending. To summarize, the narrative of the novel is exemplary of the position that Cypriot Anglophone literature occupies as one of the (minor) New Literatures in English.