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Travel and/as travail: diasporic dislocations in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss
This article looks at two novels exploring the pains and gains of the immigrant experience. Both By the Sea and The Inheritance of Loss feature protagonists struggling to build their lives anew in a foreign land. I discuss them in relation to some of the key trends in postcolonial studies, arguing that Gurnah’s and Desai’s texts provide a necessary “re-grounding” to some of the more romanticizing tendencies in writing on diaspora and dislocation. I also consider how they might be seen in relation to ongoing debates about globalization, suggesting both provide timely reminders that celebrations of “fluidity and flow” are often only applicable to a privileged few. By attending to the material realities of bodies, both individual and collective, and to specific geo-political spaces, both Gurnah and Desai shift our readerly focus from the indeterminacies of “globalization” to the actualities of “glocalization”.
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Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
Journal of Commonwealth LiteratureISSN
0021-9894Publisher
SAGE PublicationsExternal DOI
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3Volume
45Page range
409-427Department affiliated with
- English Publications
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- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2013-10-03First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2013-10-03Usage metrics
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