Swedish "immigrant literature" and the ethnic lens : the representation of cultural diversity in Jonas Hassen Khemiri's "Ett öga rött" and Marjaneh Bakhtiari's "Kalla det vad fan du vill"

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe how cultural diversity is represented in two literary works considered archetypical examples of contemporary Swedish “immigrant literature”—namely Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s Ett öga rött (2003; A Red Eye) and Marjaneh Bakhtiari’s Kalla det vad fan du vill (2005; Call It What the Hell You Want)—and to show how these representations relate to the view on ethnicity generated by the self-image of Sweden as a multicultural society. I argue that this relationship is best understood as a “critical dialogue,” since both authors question the use of ethnicity for understanding contemporary Swedish society.