TROPES OF TRAUMA IN MITCH CULLIN’S “A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND”

The article aims to explain the transformations of Sherlock Holmes' image in Mitch Cullin's novel “A Slight Trick of the Mind” in terms of trauma theory and Neo-Victorian concept of the past shaped by Postmod- ern philosophy of history. By placing Doyle's initially a-historical character into historically determined context, Cullin traces the ways Victorian axiology takes to adjust to the post-WWII world, with the war conflict posi- tioned as a core trauma-generating moment for the history of the XX century as a whole. Tropes of memory loss and fatherlessness have been interpreted as metaphors for traumas of identity erosion, cultural disintegration and “colonial guilt”, with the specific attention paid to the latter within the context of British-Japanese relationship in the late XIX – early XX century