Introduction: Uncanny Terror and the ‘Post’-9/11

Abstract

This book reads ‘post’-9/11 South Asian diasporic fictions. By ‘post’- 9/11 fictions, I do not simply mean the fictional works that are written or published after 9/11 or that deal with the aftermath of the events. In my special use of the term, I understand the meaning of ‘post-’ as ‘against’ the uniqueness of 9/11, if not anti-9/11. The primary texts under discussion in the book are Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown (2005), Hari Kunzru’s Transmission (2004), Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). They are chosen because, despite their different degrees of relation to the events on 9/11 and their aftermath, they all add to the genre of 9/11 fictions’ transnational and transcultural perspectives through the lens of the uncanny/unhomely. By reading these novels as examples of world literature, I argue that South Asia, diaspora, and the uncanny enable us to arrive at a more complex conception of the world and global belonging in an age of globalization and to rethink the questions of violence and identity in the post-9/11 era.