Embedded with the World: Place, Displacement, and Relocation in Recent British and Postcolonial Fiction
This essay focuses on the role ‘geographical sensibility’ (Robert D. Kaplan) plays in recent developments in British and Anglophone fiction. These changes, I argue, align themselves with other, cognate transformations that appear to be indicative of a transition from the postcolonial paradigm to one...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2018-12-01
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| Series: | Études Britanniques Contemporaines |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/5054 |
| Summary: | This essay focuses on the role ‘geographical sensibility’ (Robert D. Kaplan) plays in recent developments in British and Anglophone fiction. These changes, I argue, align themselves with other, cognate transformations that appear to be indicative of a transition from the postcolonial paradigm to one dominated by a ‘world literature’ model. The latter, I also suggest, revolves around a new, ‘worlded’ dynamic of space and selfhood, more precisely, of location and identity. If earlier forms of postcolonial literature made a point to situate realistically plots and characters in geographically and historically recognizable locations clearly reminiscent of empires, of the nations-states rising on their ruins, and of available political maps, contemporary British and postcolonial novelists seem keen on strategies that de-situate, re-situate, and otherwise relocate their stories, along with these stories’ settings and people, in the bigger world. To build my argument, I focus on Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers. |
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| ISSN: | 1168-4917 2271-5444 |