Moving Europe: Literary Interventions - Episode 3: Irony in Non-Ironic Times: Nell Zink’s Sister Europe (2025)

In this episode, Franek Dziduch (rMA Cultural Analysis at UvA) and Ollie Köhn-Haskins (rMA Comparative Literary Studies at UU) discuss the strengths and shortcomings of satirizing European cultural elites. How does one effectively criticize Europe’s narratives of Otherness, identity, and class? To search for an answer, Dziduch and Köhn-Haskins delve into Sister Europe (2025) by Nell Zink, examining how stylistic devices centered on distance rather than identification, illustrate Europe’s failure to reckon with its fascist and colonial history. The episode also features postcolonial scholar Sandra Ponzanesi (UU), who reflects on what needs to happen to facilitate a dialogue that, rather than remaining a performative gesture, actively decolonizes Europe from its imperial legacies.  References Primary works Zink, Nell. Sister Europe. Random House, 2025. Secondary works Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, 2006. Cline, Jake. “In ‘Sister Europe,’ Witty Conversation Is Action Enough.” The Washington Post, 24 March 2025, www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/03/24/nell-zink-sister-europe-review/. Accessed 15 February 2026. Dowling, Sarah. Translingual Poetics: Writing Personhood Under Settler Colonialism. University of Iowa Press, 2018. Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books, 2009. Garner, Dwight. “One Exhilarating, Excruciating Night in Nell Zink’s Berlin.” New York Times, March 2025. Gilroy, Paul. “Foreword: Europe Otherwise.” Postcolonial Transitions in Europe, edited by Gianmaria Colpani and Sandra Ponzanesi, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Kaiser, Marie and Thomas Böhm. “Nell Zink: ‘Berlin in der amerikanischen Literatur ist einfach so eine Art erweitertes Berghain.’” Die Literaturagenten, radioeins rbb, n.d., www.radioeins.de/programm/sendungen/literaturagenten/_/nell-zink-ueber-ihren-neuen-roman--sister-europe-.html. Accessed 13 May. 2026.  Kornbluh, Anna. Immediacy, or the Style of Too Late Capitalism. Verso Books, 2024. Park-Ozee, Dakota. “Satire: An explication.” HUMOR, vol. 32, no. 4, 2019, pp. 585-604.  Peirson-Hagger, Ellen. “Sister Europe by Nell Zink Review – Ramshackle Wanderers in Berlin.” The Guardian, 20 April 2025, www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/20/sister-europe-by-nell-zink-review-ramshackle-wanderers-in-berlin. Accessed 15 February 2026. Ponzanesi, Sandra, and Gianmaria Colpani. Postcolonial Transitions in Europe. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Additional audio: Politics and Prose. “Nell Zink — Sister Europe.” YouTube, Politics and Prose, 21 April 2025, 44 min. 59 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qno-5pUDJO4&t=2139s. Accessed 13 May 2026. Featured guest: Sandra Ponzanesi is Full Professor and Chair of Media, Gender and Postcolonial Studies at the Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University. Her expertise is gender and postcolonial critique from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.