Abstract: Rather than as peripheral and marginal, border regions often figure in the postmodern literary tradition as mediators between cultures, peoples and languages. In the present article, novels written in German which were published around the year 2000 in the border region of East Belgium are questioned with regard to their transcultural character: are they capable of crossregional mediation or does the suppression of the region’s turbulent past that they bring to the fore get in the way of any transcultural orientation? In order to answer these questions, criteria for transculturality suggested by Sissy Helff are applied to a corpus of four East Belgian novels: ‚Unterwegs zu Melusine‘ (2006) and ‚Begegnung mit Melusine‘ (2007) by Hannes Anderer, ‚Bosch in Belgien‘ (2006) by Freddy Derwahl, and ‚Wege aus Sümpfen. Roman einer Grenzlandschaft. Teil I: Eine Jugend auf dem Königshof‘ (2001) and ‚Wege aus Sümpfen. Roman einer Grenzlandschaft. Teil II: BRÜCKENSCHLÄGE‘ (2006) by Leo Wintgens.

Keywords: border regions – East Belgium – transcultural mediation – suppression of the past – German