title: When Literary Space Parts Ways with Physical Geography: Substitutions by Aksyonov and Morchiladze for Missing Islands of the Black Sea
abstract: Whereas numerous islands served as stepping stones in connecting the lands surrounding the Mediterranean, their conspicuous absence in the Black Sea became a formidable obstacle in an already notoriously inhospitable sea. The Black Sea has only very few islands, and fewer of them are inhabited by only a small number of people. Even so, this makes all the more relevant for us the important role the ‘missing’ islands can play albeit in a literary and not geographical space. This paper explores two