DISIDENTIFICATION AND HOMELESSNESS IN TABISH KHAIR’S NIGHT OF HAPPINESS

Authors : Mustafa BÜYÜKGEBİZ

Pages : 494-501

Doi:10.33692/avrasyad.590723

View : 14 | Download : 14

Publication Date : 2019-06-30

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Tabish Khair, who is an Indian author settled in Denmark, employs a postcolonial discourse in his works. He creates multicultural and also anti-colonial fiction by blending his native culture with the adopted western one. Tabish Khair‟s novels, in particular, resist the hegemonic voice of the Western culture and as an author, he tries to reflect the original voice of postcolonial characters by focusing on their cultural clashes and discontents which emerge when these characters live in the West as immigrants or interact with the colonial culture. One of the most striking novels in which he portrays vivid characters with identity crisis is his latest novel; Night of Happiness. The novel, named after an important date for Muslims known as Shab-e-baraat night, was first published in 2018, and narrates the story of postcolonial characters who suffers from identity loss in the postcolonial, ambivalent atmosphere of contemporary India. In this sense, the aim of this article is to unfold the psychological and social defects of formerly colonized individuals in our contemporary era by referring to some specific quotations from the novel, and to apply Postcolonial Literary Theory to shed light on the novel‟s anti-colonial discourse, and Khair‟s humorous style of social criticism. 
Keywords : identity, crisis, postcolonialism, ambivalence