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Under the Same Moon: a novel : A home less friendly: Exploring war trauma among the 1990s Serbian emigrants to the United Kingdom using creative writing as research

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Andrejevic, Aleksandra (2024) Under the Same Moon: a novel : A home less friendly: Exploring war trauma among the 1990s Serbian emigrants to the United Kingdom using creative writing as research. PhD thesis, University of Gloucestershire. doi:10.46289/FZDR5714

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Abstract

This thesis proposes that there is a type of war trauma that can be sustained by members of an ethnic group even if they have not had a first-hand experience of war. If they emigrate to a country where they become subject to a hostile political climate and where the host country is engaged in a military conflict with their country of origin, they can suffer some of the same mental health and identity issues which have been observed in trauma directly caused by the experience of war and displacement. The thesis also proposes that Creative Writing as an academic discipline is well positioned to examine such a trauma, in particular through autoethnography as a research method. The novel focuses on the story of Jelena, a Serbian émigré to London who has been living there since her teenage years. We meet her on the cusp of middle age, with a successful life and a beautiful family. But under the surface, things are strained: her wheelchair-bound husband, an academic from a wealthy old family, has controlling tendencies. Her relationship with her teenage daughter is on hostile terms, and her younger child – her precious, prematurely born son Oli – has autism. To top it all, Jelena’s small business is about to fold and, while it won’t make any difference to the family’s finances, it’s another blow to who Jelena feels she is. When Mladen, an old flame she’s not seen for sixteen years, turns up at her doorstep, Jelena knows that trouble has found her. After Mladen calls in an old debt, Jelena is caught between past loyalties and her family’s safety. To find out the truth and recover the relationship with her daughter, she will have to return to Serbia and re-discover the person she once used to be.

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Thesis (PhD)

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