Traumas of Place, Travel, Hauntology: Novel without a Name (Duong, 1995), Daughters of the House (Roberts, 1992), The Winter Ghosts (Mosse, 2010)

The haunting, destructive nature of trauma is revealed in the damage of war in the Vietnamese War, with Duong’s Novel without a Name (1995), in which the ghosts of soldiers, including women brutalised by the enemy, seek recognition and memorialisation. In France after the First World War, the traumatic loss of his brother leads the protagonist, Freddie, to revisit the countryside near Carcassonne, where his vulnerability leaves him open to experience a slipped moment in time, a terrible incident in the genocide of the Cathars centuries earlier. Led by a beautiful ghost guide Fabrissa, he learns of this terrible history and somewhat calms his personal traumatic loss by enabling the community to have their history revealed and shared. Again in France, historical genocide of the Jews, betrayals, violence and collusion during the Second World War are revealed as two cousins reunite and face their mother’s/aunt’s guilty or abused damaged past in Michèle Roberts’ novel.