DefinePK

Abstract

The paper critically analyses Kamila Shamsie’s highlypolitical novel Home Fire by juxtaposing the character; Karamat Loneand Parvaiz Pasha as the two extreme viewpoints representing the rise ofobsessive ‘Westoxification’ and an ever clinging sticky‘Fundamentalism’ respectively that pit the Aneeka/Eamonn love affair tothe inconsolable destiny of their collateral damage. The paper, taking forgranted the most popularly established interpretation of the novel as apresent day fictive adaptation of Sophocles’ drama Antigone, advancesanother dimension of literary interpretation, beyond Antigone, byplaying out the concepts of ‘Westoxification’ and ‘Fundamentalism’ aslinked with the postcolonial studies by the postcolonial critic KlausStierstorfer. The paper marks Shamsie’s novel as a timely overture to theperils of rising Islamophobic ‘Westoxification’ of so called Muslims likeKaramat Lone and its devastating effects on innocent people like Aneekaand Eamonn. Shamsie’s fictive depiction of a post-9/11 Britain isessentially of the one that has reeked herself of intolerance and in herinstallation of extreme safety measures has introduced draconian laws ofcitizenship that run the greater risk of estranging its innocent citizens tothe fading human face of multicultural secular England that once borethe banners of civilization. This research argues that Kamila Shamsie, byportraying the battling trends of obsessive ‘Westoxification’ and anoverwhelmingly reclaiming ‘Fundamentalism’ among Pakistani-Britishdiasporics, complicates and confronts the widespread stereotyping singledimensional Islamophobic discursive misrepresentations of PakistaniBritish Muslims voluminously exacerbated post-9/11 and post-7/7 events.