How does literature negotiate the relationship between the real and the unreal in the context of genocide, state violence, and collective trauma? Literature has long wrestled with the limits of representation, the inadequacy of language to bear witness, and the urgency of expressing the inexpressible. From mythic frameworks that attempt to give shape to historical catastrophe, to surreal and speculative modes that reveal the uncanny logic of destruction, writers have turned to the unreal—not only to escape reality, but also to account for it and confront it.