Home > assh > kunapipi > Vol. 21 (1999) > Iss. 2
Abstract
When I first read The Shadow Lines, l was a graduate student in the US, battling through the maze of too-much-theory, multiple fraught subject positions and the various options for post-colonial mimicry. As a novel about border-crossings, hybrid subjects and post-colonial travels, The Shadow Lines fitted very well with my dissertation needs as well as the prevalent fashionable interpretive agendas of the day. 1 Yet, my pleasure at reading the novel was because it was about home. As I sorted through my post-colonial traumas in small-town North America, the novel named the streets of Calcutta that I had grown up in. So much for missing home. A few years later, I came to London. This time, my partner and I used The Shadow Lines as a precious tour guide to 'ethnic' London. We meticulously charted out our forty-five minute tube journey from Wood Green to Brick Lane in quest not only of the Sylheti-accented Bengali that Ghosh's novel promised, but to assure ourselves of the existence of postcolonial London.
Recommended Citation
Singh, Sujala, Inventing London in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines, Kunapipi, 21(2), 1999.
Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol21/iss2/6
