Masterson, John (2010) Travel and/as travail: diasporic dislocations in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 45 (3). pp. 409-427. ISSN 0021-9894

PDF - Published Version Restricted to SRO admin only Download (239kB)

Abstract

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”.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of English > English
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
Related URLs:	Publisher
Depositing User:	Laura Vellacott
Date Deposited:	03 Oct 2013 09:41
Last Modified:	13 Mar 2017 11:19
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/46515

View download statistics for this item

📧 Request an update