Muslim Otherness in Post-9/11 Novels A postcolonial outlook on the fictional representation of Muslim otherness in post 9/11 novels.

Abstract

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,led many Americans to vilify Muslims and Islam. Indeed, 9/11 bequeathed to the U.S. a new category of evil other, a decade and more after the “evil empire” of the USSR had been vanquished, and the cold war concluded. This thesis will investigate how this new other is represented in three post-9/11 novels, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), Amy Waldman’s The Submission (2011),and H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy (2010). These novels will be examined partly through the lens of postcolonial theory, as represented by Edward Said, Mohammad Samiei,and Robert Young. This thesis will demonstrate how the selected novels use point of view to examine difficult questions about the relation between communal identity and national belonging on the one hand, and durable forms of chauvinism and prejudice on the other. The study suggests that postcolonial theory and fiction are natural allies in their mutual emphases on the supreme importance of perspective. They both recommend that where one sees from will help to determine how one sees and what one sees.