Between Fact and Form: Literary Journalism and Narrative Authority in East-Central Europe

Abstract

This article examines literary journalism in East-Central Europe as a hybrid narrative form that reshapes the perception of politically saturated realities. Rather than approaching journalism as a transparent medium of information, it argues that long-form reportage mobilizes literary techniques - such as focalization, montage, testimonial embedding, and character construction - to produce what can be described as narrative knowledge. Through close readings of works by Emma Jane Kirby, Sándor Jászberényi, Mikołaj Grynberg, and Bartłomiej Sabela, the article demonstrates how these narrative strategies reconfigure readerly engagement and intervene in contexts marked by media capture and state-sponsored discourse. Focusing on representations of migration along the Balkans route and the Polish-Belarusian border, it shows that literary journalism does not simply counter dominant political narratives at the level of content, but operates at the level of form, exposing and transforming the narrative mechanisms through which such discourses are produced. In doing so, the article positions East- Central Europe as a critical site for rethinking the relationship between narrative, journalism, and political knowledge.