Nostalgia, Diaspora, Memory and History in Peter Sís’s Picturebooks

Nostalgia as a deep yearning for the past but also as a unique aesthetic modality has generated over time a diverse body of literary works that deal with memory, history and diaspora. Nostalgia both as a literary trope but also as an impetus for literary production finds its expression in a number of picturebooks created by Czech-born American artist Peter Sís. This paper looks primarily into The Three Golden Keys (1994) and The Wall (2007) as sites where Sís explores what it means to revisit through the lens of nostalgia one’s own past, especially a past inscribed in the turbulent era of the Cold War and associated with the historic city of Prague. The study examines how nostalgia and counter-nostalgia work in these picturebooks so as to preserve vestiges of cultural memory and criticise totalitarianism in an attempt to bequeath a legacy to the generations to come. It further explores the narrative and pictorial techniques the artist employs in his attempt to represent nostalgia, memory and history as constituent elements of a cosmopolitan identity.