Narratives of Trauma in South Asian Literature

This volume addresses cultural and literary narratives of trauma in South Asian literature. Presenting a cross-cultural perspective on trauma theory, the essays within this volume study the divergent cultural responses to trauma and violence in various parts of South Asia, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Afghanistan.

Introduction: Literary Trauma Theory and South Asian Literature. Part 1: Partition and Beyond: Narrating Trauma of India. 1. Trauma, Gender, and Caste: Vernacular Postcolonial Feminism and the Writing of Perumal Murugan 2. Pathogenic Memories and Repetitive Absence: Reading Siddhartha Gigoo's The Garden of Solitude, Mirza Waheed's The Collaborator, and Shahnaz Bashir's The Half Mother 3. From the Lived Experience of Punjab 1984 in Punjab to its 'Mnemonic Imagination': Reading Amandeep Sandhu's Roll of Honour Part 2: Pains of Pakistan: Trauma Narratives of Pakistan 4. The Postcolonial Novel as a Traumatic Genre: Reading Uzma Aslam Khan's The Geometry of God 5. 'How is a wound put into words?': Muhammad Hanif's Red Birds and the use of Magical Realism 6. The Construction and Dissolution of the Masculine Self: Re-reading the Unspeakable Trauma in Sorayya Khan's Noor Part 3: War and beyond: Trauma and Bangladeshi literature. 7. Writing War and Womanhood: Representation of Violence and Disgrace in Dilruba Z. Ara's Blame 8. Speaking in Fragments: The Birangona-mother's Traumatic Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War 9. Complexion, Infertility, and Sexual Orientation: Narratives of Trauma in Fayeza Hasanat's The Bird Catcher and Other Stories Part 4: Trauma Affected Afghanistan: Wounded Memories and Narratives. 10. Witnessing Trauma: The Ethical Imperative of Bystanders in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and And the Mountains Echoed 11. Kaboul mon Hiroshima: Trauma and Narration in Atiq Rahimi's The Patience Stone Part 5: Conflict and Wounds: Narrating Trauma of Nepal. 12. People's War, Trauma and its Consequences in Rebel: A Cross-Cultural Study in Post-Conflict Nepali Narrative(s) 13. Traumatism of the future: Reading Nepali literature with Caruth, Derrida, and Freud 14. Maoist Revolution and Trauma: Fight or Flight in Manjhushree Thapa's Seasons of Flight Part 6: Turbulent Topography: Trauma and Sri Lanka. 15. Cumulative Trauma, Structural Racism, and Displacement in Contemporary Sri Lankan Fiction: Sharon Bala's The Boat People and Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage 16. The Inside-Out Traumas of War in Nayomi Munaweera's Island of a Thousand Mirrors 17. Queer Recovery: Addressing Violence, Trauma, and Exile in Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy 18. The Traumatic Legacy of the Sri Lankan Civil War in Selected Writings of Nayomi Munaweera 19. War, Wounds and 'Working-through': Reading Trauma in Selected Sri Lankan Novels Part 7: South Asia, Trauma and Beyond. 20. Representational Consequences of Trauma for South Asian Partition Novels in English 21. Rohingya Refugee Poetry: Testimony and Cultural Activism