Our article deals with the role of “transnational spaces” (Pries, 2001) in the resignification of the “imagined community” (Anderson, 1996), in Desterro. Memórias em ruínas (2011) by Luis S. Krausz. Between its dying colonial mansions and oppressive skyscrapers, São Paulo embodies the protagonist's identity conflict: on the one hand, the weight of tradition as a descendant of Jewish-Austrian immigrants; on the other, the progressive appeal of São Paulo society. Connecting the country of exile to the homeland, these spaces bring out the “underground memories” (Pollak, 1993) of a split Jewish identity and the trauma of the holocaust.
