REPRESENTATION OF TRAUMA AND IDENTITY IN PAKISTANI CONTEMPORARY FICTION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EXIT WEST AND BLUE DUST
Keywords:
Hybridity, Migration, Narrative Strategies, Pakistani Fiction, Postcolonial Identity, Trauma TheoryAbstract
This study explores the representation of trauma and postcolonial identity in Pakistani contemporary fiction through a comparative analysis of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Ayesha Salman’s Blue Dust. Grounded in trauma theory and postcolonial theory, the research examines how narrative strategies shape the articulation of displacement, psychological suffering, and identity formation in a globalized yet conflict-ridden world. Using qualitative textual analysis, the study focuses on narrative techniques such as fragmentation, magical realism, memory reconstruction, symbolism, and shifting focalization. The findings suggest that Exit West constructs trauma as a collective, transnational, and spatially fluid phenomenon, whereas Blue Dust represents trauma as an intimate, interiorized, and memory-driven experience embedded in personal relationships. Both texts engage deeply with postcolonial concerns of hybridity, belonging, and cultural dislocation, though through distinct narrative modes. The study contributes to trauma and postcolonial literary studies by demonstrating how narrative form mediates lived experience and how contemporary Pakistani fiction reimagines identity in conditions of mobility, loss, and global instability.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Qurat ul Ain, Muhammad Arslan Azeem, Dr. Faheem Arshad (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
