QUEST OF LOST LIVES AND HYBRID IDENTITIES IN SHAMSIE’S BURNT SHADOWS

Abstract

The present study seeks to explore the effects of war upon lives and identities and attempts to look into the efforts of the female protagonist to relocate and reassert herself in a postwar scenario, especially within the war on terror and hybrid wars era. The study further highlights the traumas of identity loss and quest of new life while connecting it with the post world war II and post 9/11 phenomenon. The post 9/11 agenda of the new world order has forced individuals to undergo a global migration resulting in the liquidity and fluidity of their identities and lives which is called by Homi. K Bhabha postcolonial hybridities. This new shift of postcolonial lives calls for an investigation through the lens of hybridity about the migrant characters introduced by postcolonial writers of Pakistani origin. The researcher would read critically the selected chunks of the text of Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows in order to study this shift and to question the consequences and new developments because of this migration.