Postcolonial Subject as Modern Orient: A Critical Analysis of Shamsie’s Home Fire

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the evolution and portrayal of the modern Orients in Pakistani fiction and attempts to determine the causes, factors and impact of this shift from simple orient to New Orient. New orient is a discourse being popularized by the west under the influence of Islamophobia to generate a specific type of violent orient whose main job is to spread terrorism and is therefore dangerous. The similar discourses are being followed by the writers from non-western areas of the world and are deeply connected with the formerly colonized country.  The new orient is an unwanted person whose loyalties with the identity, community, race and language are constantly shifting in his portrayal in the fiction. This necessitates a debate and discussion about this new orient. This research study delimits to Shamsie’s Home Fire to investigate the new orient and to determine the level of change that has occurred in the patterns of representation in the 21st century under the forces of globalization, neo-colonialism and islamophobia. Above all, this orient is not represented by the European writer but by the Postcolonial writers, such as Shamsie. The writers intend to read the selected chunks of the text under the lens of new-Orientalism and evaluate the portrayals of Aneeka and Parvaiz as the new-orientals, as portrayed by Shamsie. The most probable outcome of the study is that the post 9/11 fiction has given birth to a new set of issues related to the Orient and their settlements and has brought more sophistication in the characters of orient and hence they have diverted from their traditional portrayals as Orients.