'Post'-9/11 South Asian Diasporic Fiction

"While much of the critical discussion about the emerging genre of 9/11 fiction has centred on the trauma of 9/11 and on novels by EuroAmerican writers, this book draws attention to the diversity of what might be meant by "post" -9/11 by exploring the themes of uncanny terror through a close reading of "post" -9/11 South Asian diasporic fictions. The novels surveyed include Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown, Hari Kunzru's Transmission, Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundementalist. Pei-chen Liao examines how these writers represent the return of the repressed and the post-9/11 unhomely migrant experience. She argues that 9/11 is not only an American national trauma or a terrorist attack on the West, but that its aftermath also manifests the transnational and transcultural emotional transmission of terror and fear. She also discusses the diversity of the post-9/11 condition in terms of the ways that the writers think beyond 9/11 and treat the terrorist moment on 11 September as an exemplary incident that allows different temporalities and a range of personal, political, cultural, racial and gender issues to appear"--Back cover.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.