Abstract
The events of 9/11 brought Pakistan once again to global attention, but largely through negative representations. I argue that Pakistani literature has been a key site of contesting these representations by offering a new understanding of Pakistan’s place in the global imaginary. This chapter shows how Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, and Kamila Shamsie rethink Pakistan’s place in the world in their novels to offer new imaginaries that take into account global power inequalities, but also present alternative spatial formations. Together, these three authors offer new models for Pakistan’s globality outside of the dominant discourse of 9/11.
This chapter shows how Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, and Kamila Shamsie rethink Pakistan's place in the world in their novels to offer new imaginaries that take into account global power inequalities, but also present alternative spatial formations. It argues that Pakistani literature has been a key site of contesting these representations by offering a new understanding of Pakistan's place in the global imaginary. The postcolonial novel has always been a place of interchange and mixing, as epitomised by the works of Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh, in particular his Ibis trilogy. The chapter suggests that the marker is useful insofar as it illuminates the renewed investment of Pakistani literature in questions of globality appropriate for a changing world order. Mohsin Hamid's novel, Exit West, takes a similar approach, also refraining from naming the place of the story's origin even though, once again, it could easily be Pakistan.