A Postcolonial Study of Amitav Ghosh‟s The ...

A Postcolonial Study of Amitav Ghosh‟s The Shadow Lines

Author Name : Seema Rani

ABSTRACT

The Shadow Lines (1988) is a highly innovative, complex, and celebrated novel of Amitav Ghosh. It received the Sahitya Academy Award in the following year. Not only literary critics but also some notable critical works have acclaimed it for what it has been able to achieve as a work of art. It focuses on historical facts, the post partition scenario of violence. Its overall form is a subtle interweaving of facts, fiction and reminiscence. The Shadow Lines is a significant work in South Asian literature in the last decade. It sums up and fictionalizes all the major issues of postcolonial literature, the search for identity, the need for independence and the difficult relationship with the colonial culture, the rewriting colonial past and attempt at creating a new language and a new narrative form and to understand the communal past.

Keywords: Postcolonial, Ghosh, identity, culture, language, communal, literature.