INVESTIGATING THE EAST-WEST ENCOUNTERS: A POSTCOLONIAL RE-ORIENTALIST READING OF KAMILA SHAMSIE’S BURNT SHADOWS: A NOVEL

Abstract

Kamila Shamsie’s (2009) Burnt Shadows is based on fictionalizing certain historical events as it narrates the histories of the two families’ sufferings during World War II, the atomic bombing of Japanese cities, colonialism in India, the division of the sub-continent into Pakistan and India and the conflicts between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and America in the wake of post-9/11. This study explores the novelist’s politicized and partial depiction of the characters belonging to the East and West. Shamsie (2009) treats the characters based on their national affiliations, the characters belonging to the USA/West have been positively represented while those representing the Non-western countries have been negatively portrayed in the novel. Utilizing Lisa Lau and Om Prakash Dwivedi's and Lau and Ana Christina Mendes’ insightful commentaries on the ideological role of re-orientalism in South Asian English writings as articulated in their respective seminal works Re-Orientalism and Indian Writing in English and Re-Orientalism and South Asian Identity Politics, this study argues that Shamsie’s (2009) strategic use of unreliable narration and unfavourable descriptions of the Eastern characters against the Western characters in the novel may underscore her a re-orientalist writer who consciously or unconsciously sustains and celebrates the erstwhile orientalists or colonisers’ perceived expectations about the orientals.

Keywords: Orientalism, Re-orientalism, Misrepresentation, Representation, Postcolonial Theory