![]() I didn’t realise I was writing an immigration novel until I had finished the first draft, but I knew early on that Iris was my Dorothy. For Iris Cohen, the protagonist of my second novel, Everything You Ever Wanted, Oz is the planet Nyx, a meaningful new life far from Earth from which there is no return. For my Jewish grandparents it was anywhere but Europe for my parents it was Europe while my siblings and I begged to go back to Brazil. Like many fictional orphans, from Oliver Twist to Harry Potter, Dorothy is a symbol of loss and abandonment, while Kansas v Oz is the battle we all fight between reality and fantasy, home and elsewhere.Įveryone has their own Oz, be it fame, money or love, but for immigrants it is usually an actual place. Dorothy is an orphan, but who are her parents? In the entire film they are not mentioned once. ![]() The empty lure of escape, the fantasy of an eternal home and perfect belonging: this is what The Wizard of Oz means to me. Kansas v Oz is the battle we all fight between reality and fantasy ![]() We had it on VHS, recorded from TV, but the tape ran out of space shortly after Dorothy returns to Kansas, so it was only years later that I heard her final words: “Oh, Auntie Em – there’s no place like home!”
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