Language Games and Humour in Zinaida Lindén’s novel To My Sister Across the Seas

The article investigates literary multilingualism in the novel Till min syster bortom haven (To my sister across the seas), published in 2022 by the Finnish­-Swedish author Zinaida Lindén. While the novel’s main language is Swedish, a myriad of other languages are engaged in the narration, such as English, Italian, Russian, Finnish, French, Yiddish and Hebrew. They may appear both explicitly and subtly through different literary, social, and cultural references. The theoretical approach is guided by Doris Sommer’s theory of language as a game capable of producing both creative and comic effects, questioning the imposed monolingual norms. The purpose of this study is to show how the use of multiple language games encompassing alliteration, phonemic puns, and word play between idioms challenges the notion of language as a monolithic standardized entity. In addition, the deployment of humour deriving from word play within and between languages creates surprise for the reader and serves as a device for language bordering.