Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2014 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Frankfurt (Main) (England- und Amerikastudien), language: English, abstract: The increasing attention paid to figurations and poetics of spatiality within literary texts in the course of the so-called spatial turn calls for a closer integration of urban space research, literary studies and memory research. In an age of ever faster communication processes and a seemingly shrinking globalized world, spatial considerations are not only informative for the analysis of intrinsic textual strategies, but are also indicators of the formative discourses of the environment in which they are produced. The connection between semiotics, postmodernism and capitalism is thus central to a consideration of urban space and its contemporary negotiation in literature. Using the aforementioned approaches and in the context of a Deleuzian understanding of space, this thesis examines the semiotic construction of spatiality in two novels: Paul Auster's "Moon Palace" (1989) and Teju Cole's "Open City" (2011).