Foreigners and the Other in the Novels The Newcomers and Le testament français

In this paper, using an approach created by researchers in the field of imagology, I analyse the image of Switzerland in Kovačič’s novel and compare it with the image of France as seen by the first-person narrator of Le testament français through his grandmother’s stories and his own studies of French culture and history. In the second part of the discussion I expand on this theme with research of the characters of male and female migrants who in encountering a foreign environment experience either themselves or others as foreigners. In the last part of the paper I analyse how Otherness is presented as an attitude towards the world in both novels.
KEY WORDS: foreigners, topicology, Lojze Kovačič, Andreï Makine