Home

All of the characters in Postcards From No Man's Land are displaced. Jacob is visiting Amsterdam for the first time and feels isolated within the new culture. The young Geertrui has been forced from her home by the war, and the elder Geertrui is living in a hospice hospital room preparing for the ultimate displacement: death. Jacob Todd is living in the Netherlands as a hidden soldier, while Daan is living in his grandmother's apartment. Before visiting the Netherlands, Jacob, too, lived with his grandmother because he never felt at home with his parents, and Ton has been kicked out of his childhood home after coming out as gay. All of the characters are searching for a sense of belonging, physically and emotionally. The reader experiences this search most in the characters of Jacob and Geertrui, the two narrators. Jacob's displacement seems to be more emotional while Geertrui's...