Abstract

This essay aims at analysing the critical meaning of some dystopias and alternative histories and to investigate the techniques of «estrangement» used in this literature. In particular, I am investigating the historical and spatial setting of the works considered, in order to discover the role that Europe and Mitteleuropa play in the dystopian literature between the End of the Second World War and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. This article considers the works from Katharine Burdekin to Robert Harris, dealing with George Orwell, Philip K. Dick e Milan Kundera. I will consider the ways in which the dystopian literature consciously or unconsciously accepts or criticizes the geopolitical global pattern of the cold war