This book investigates a specific aspect of travel literature – the fictional travel novel – and one practitioner of that sub-genre – the contemporary German author Michael Roes (b. 1960). The analysis focuses on two main areas of research. The first concerns Roes’s representation of intercultural encounters: how does Roes conceive and present an encounter between representatives of different cultures? And what constitutes a successful encounter, if such a thing exists? The second area of interest in this study concerns Roes’s intertextual methodology. This study identifies those intertextual references that are of greatest significance and examines how and why Roes refers to other writers and their texts as he composes his own. Finally, this study identifies whether a connection exists between Roes’s engagement with interculturality in all its facets on the one hand and his utilization of intertextuality on the other. In each case the intertextual processes underpinning the novels are shown to be a vital element in the way Roes approaches questions that fascinate above all contemporary European society and dominate the media: questions regarding identity, (homo-)sexuality, race and racism, gender, and relations between the West and Islam. 

Intertextual encounters occur whenever an author or the author’s text recognizes, references, alludes to, imitates, parodies, or otherwise elicits an audience member’s familiarity with other texts. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West use the fiction of Horatio Alger, Jr., as an intertext in their novels, The Great Gatsby and A Cool Million. Callie Khouri and Ridley Scott use the buddy-road-picture genre as an intertext for their Thelma and Louise. In all these cases, intertextual encounters take place between artists, between texts, between texts and audiences, between artists and audiences. Michael Dunne investigates works from the 1830s to the 1990s and from the canonical American novel to Bugs Bunny and Jerry Seinfeld.