This presentation offers a comparative reading of Hoda Barakat’s The Stranger’s Letters within the context of the emergent themes in Arabic exile and diasporic literature in Europe. Unlike the majority of Hoda Barakat’s literary works which are set in Lebanon during the civil war, The Stranger’s Letters stages the writing and re-writing of a Lebanese exilic community in France. It is one of the many Arabic literary renderings of displacement, migration, and diaspora to challenge and transform the established postcolonial literary tropes of diaspora and exile, notably the focus on returning to the nation and the language of political commitment. Many recent Arabic literary renderings of migration to Europe have focused on the experiences of asylum seekers and clandestine migrants. While the positionality of The Stranger’s Letters diverges from these narratives by conveying a sense of cosmopolitan humanism from a center of European culture there are literary themes and writing strategies that resonate across these borders. In this presentation, I will focus on two themes in Barakat’s The Stranger’s Letters and consider how they resonate both within the text and in relation to emergent trends in Arabic diasporic and migration literature in Europe. The first theme is the staging of migration and displacement as a re-positioning of subjectivity that undermines a stable sense of self and community. The very first pages of The Stranger’s Letters establish a tension between the first person plural narration of the Lebanese diaspora in France and the repeated insistence that there is no we to speak of. The text’s emphasis on the transient and constantly shifting parameters of belonging resonates with broader trends in Arabic exile writing which emphasize, for example, translation as a re-positioning of subjectivity and the repeated re-telling of stories to make room for shifting perceptions and forgetting. The second theme is the text’s rendering of diaspora and displacement as embodied experiences, a theme that recurs in other Arabic literary narratives of displacement. In dialogue with the other papers on this panel which emphasize Barakat’s use of the body to navigate personal and collective traumatic histories, this presentation explores the complex ways that the The Stranger’s Letters simultaneously constructs and undermines a sense of a diasporic community. These themes provide ample opportunity for in-class conversations on shifts in contemporary Arabic literature and on changes in the way that diaspora is being theorized.