These contributions offer fundamental insights into how literary works address and reconceptualize issues of nationalism, groupism, belonging and denationalization in selected European contexts. Various critical perspectives are employed here to highlight modern social and political processes as registered and, to a certain extent, also fashioned by contemporary literary discourses. ‘Reimagined communities’ emerge from literary redescriptions of existing or imaginary sociopolitical configurations in several European states or regions. All the contributions share a heightened sensitivity to the individual as enmeshed in oppressive geopolitical circumstances. Thereby, literary expressions of how individuality is constrained by social pressures may offer inspiring blueprints for emancipation.