Not here, not there": strangeness, crossing boundaries, identity - core themes of Siri Hustvedt's work. Description Siri Hustvedt has made a name for herself as an author of exciting and modern literature with her novels "The Invisible Woman" and "The Enchantment of Lily Dahl". In "Not here, not there" her essayistic writings are now collected for the first time. The title is programmatic: Hustvedt refers it to her geographical origin as the daughter of Norwegian immigrants who grew up among cultures and to her artistic standpoint as an observer and preserver: fiction as a twin of memory, located between the real world and the imagined, felt world of fantasy. Language as a mediator between these worlds is at the heart of Hustvedt's reflections on literature and the visual arts: whether as the painter's pictorial language or the writer's literary language, it opens up a complex system of iridescent signs and symbols, the structure and meaning of which are inherent in our consciousness and at the same time outside of us. ln this in-between realm can be seen when one looks into the empty mirror of Vermeer's "Annunziata" or through "Gatsby's Glasses" in F. Scott Fitzgerald, or when one looks at the eloquent character names in Charles Dickens' "Our Common Friend". Using these and other examples, Hustvedt explains how the artistic creative process leads to knowledge. An essay on Puritan dirigisme, with which US courts and institutions want to regulate sexuality, also explores an intermediate realm: that field of rapprochement, which in turn is strongly influenced by imagination, projection and experimentation, in which every erotic contact between people begins. As in her novels, Siri Hustvedt does not make a strict distinction between her private biography and her public work. The work always resonates with an echo of life. That's why this book is a stroke of luck. It gives an insight into their work and life and also entertains at a high level.