This article explores the multifaceted ideas of identity apparent in Olga Grjasnowa’s novel Der Russe ist einer der Birken liebt, focusing on the aspect of transgression. Transgression, within Grjasnowa‘s work, is to be considered a dynamic process of going beyond social norms and roles such as gender, nationality or religion. Paradoxically, the dynamic moment of transgression serves as the point of stability to which the protagonist’s identities recur. We can summarise this condition of identities finding stability in fluctuation using the notion of transdifference, whose substance emerges from its resistance to or negation of the dichotomy of identity and alterity.