The Introduction to the volume 9/11 in European Literature lays out the book’s three-fold structure, focusing on three major characteristics of Europe’s literary reception of the September 11 attacks and their aftermath: (1) its foregrounding of semiotic and media theoretical questions; (2) the incorporation of 9/11 into specific national histories and literatures; and (3) the negotiation of a common European identity through the double Other of the US and Muslim societies. While setting the scene for the three Parts and their respective chapters, the Introduction also challenges the genre definition "9/11 literature” and points to the problems of determining the extensions of European literature in the face of post-national identities and blurring national canons.