CAUGHT BETWEEN NATIONALISMS: HOW THE MARGIN TRIED TO CONQUER THE CENTRE IN HANIF KUREISHI’S THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA AND AMITAV GHOSH’S THE SHADOW LINES
CAUGHT BETWEEN NATIONALISMS: HOW THE MARGIN TRIED TO CONQUER THE CENTRE IN HANIF KUREISHI’S THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA AND AMITAV GHOSH’S THE SHADOW LINES

Summary/Abstract: The Second World War brought an end to colonization and, along with it, a series of demographic changes to the countries of Europe. The great number of immigrants, exiles and refugees grew to the extent that the very understanding of nation changed and the transnational margin-centre relationship was reversed. The Other, more than ever before, became part and parcel of the identity of any Western European nation that had had a colonial empire. In the present essay I shall endeavour to give an account of these changes in post-colonial Britain and later discuss two seminal novels against the background of a continent that had relinquished the ideals of the Enlightenment. My essay will focus on the ambivalent cultural conquering of the centre by the immigrant margin as displayed in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and Amitav Gosh’s The Shadow Lines. My claim is that while in the first novel the margin has to undergo a process of selforientalization in order to reach the centre, in the latter’s case, it is the centre that has to adapt to the oriental vista, thus undergoing a process of occidentalization.

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