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Reading the Postcolonial Island in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide
Citation
Fletcher, L, Reading the Postcolonial Island in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide, Island Studies Journal, 6, (1) pp. 3-16. ISSN 1715-2593 (2011) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Official URL: http://www.islandstudies.ca/node/317
Abstract
This paper argues that literature has much to contribute to the theoretical work of island studies, and not just because literary texts provide evidence of the ways islands are conceptualized in different historical and cultural contexts. To this end, it discusses Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004), a novel which actively theorizes key concepts in island studies. The Hungry Tide is set in the Sundarbans, an "immense archipelago" in the Ganges delta, and tells the largely forgotten history of the forced evacuation of refugees from the island of Morichjhãpi in 1979. The liminal space of the Sundarbans, the "tide country", is an extraordinary setting for a literary exploration of the relationship between postcolonial island geographies and identities. Ghosh’s depiction of the "watery labyrinth" (Ghosh, 2004: 72) and "storm-tossed islands" (Ghosh, 2004: 164) of the Sundarbans raises and addresses questions, which should be at the heart of the critical meta-discourse of island studies.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | Amitav Ghosh, island studies, literature, Morichjhãpi, Sundarbans, The Hungry Tide |
Research Division: | Language, Communication and Culture |
Research Group: | Literary studies |
Research Field: | Other literatures in English |
Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
Objective Group: | Communication |
Objective Field: | Literature |
UTAS Author: | Fletcher, L (Professor Lisa Fletcher) |
ID Code: | 70442 |
Year Published: | 2011 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 13 |
Deposited By: | English, Journalism and European Languages |
Deposited On: | 2011-06-21 |
Last Modified: | 2018-03-13 |
Downloads: | 324 View Download Statistics |
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