Diasporic Narratives

Diasporic Narratives: histories and homelands in the writings of VS Naipaul and Salman Rushdie is one of the few comparative studies of the two writers. By arguing that Naipaul's narrative imagination is rooted in the indenture experience of Indian migration, whereas Rushdie's fiction is in the post-independence Indian diaspora, it interrogates and illuminates the significance of the different histories of the Indian diaspora. This book offers in-depth readings of their major novels, including The Satanic Verses and The Engima of Arrival through colonialism, displacement, exile and migration. It investigates how literature and creativity allow for a coming to terms with these modern and global experiences, and for an integration of issues of home, homeland and identity in complex cultural and political contexts.