Uprooted in the ‘Postcolonial’ Moment: Attia Hosain’s No New Lands, No New Seas

Abstract

‘Attia has come home.’ This is how Shama Habibullah describes the publication of a Distant Traveller (2013), a collection of essays and fiction written by her mother Attia Hosain. After the Partition of India in 1947, Hosain could not reconcile herself to India or Pakistan, created by imperial border-making and nationalist sentiments, and decided to remain in England. Hosain continued to grapple with the multitudinal meanings that came with leaving, making, and claiming a ‘home' in an unfinished novel No New Lands, No New Seas included in Distant Traveller. The novel centred recently settled and itinerant South Asian migrants in Britain as they struggle to establish roots and reconcile the borders of new homes. This article explores Attia Hosain's portrayal of migratory experiences in No New Lands, No New Seas on three levels. Firstly, it contends with how the migrant writer, Hosain, navigates border-making and the reorientations of ‘home' within these half-formed, tentative chapters. Secondly, it reflects on the form of the unfinished novel — Hosain embeds a longer pre-war, pre-Partition migratory narrative into chapters set in the 1970s. Thirdly, it considers how the novel’s protagonists deal with migration, economic hardship, racism, early formations of British South Asian identities, and the trauma-laced consequences of finding home after Partition.