IRONY AND NOSTALGIA IN HANIF’S A CASE OF EXPLODING MANGOES: A POSTMODERN ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article offers a close reading of irony and nostalgia through postmodern lens. Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes depict irony and nostalgia in new and postmodern fashion. This novel exposes the ironized culture of Pakistani politics and nostalgic nature of societal relationships. This research also intends to explore further the role of imperialistic mind set of General Zia’s politics and impact of postmodernism on human relationships and emotions that having lots of conceptions and misconceptions, pure realities and conceived realties, interpretations and reinterpretations. This is descriptive research and data is analyzed theoretically. The theoretical framework of this research is based upon the theory of irony and nostalgia in term of postmodernism, which is given by Linda Hutcheon in her dialogical article Irony, Nostalgia, and Postmodernism: A Dialogue, where two terms irony and nostalgia has been treated with new and unique perspective. This research investigates how our concepts and views about different things in life get change with the passage of time by using the example of postmodern irony and nostalgia. This research article concludes that the ostentatious rejection of past is not possible, nostalgia can consciously denied but deeply felt, people unconsciously idealized the perfectness of past. In current scenario people gets more ironic then past due to increase competition and great ostentatious display. Some hidden realities of Pakistani politics and  social system has been exposed in the above mentioned novel by using satire, social commentary, conspiracy theories and nostalgic irony.