Tracing transnationalism and neocolonialism in Zia Haider Rahman’s in The Light of What We Know

Abstract

Rahman‟s Debut novel has contributed in the literary world at a great extent. His novel talks about contemporary geopolitical issues and an individual being subjected by its atrocity. Rahman‟s main character Zafar discovers himself as an exile in different land on a political and at a personal level. Postcolonialism falls short to comprehend the novel In The Light of What We Know (2014) because the concentration of the novel is very modern and cover world politics on issues like migration, terrorism and philosophy. The study shows how transnationalism in literature has made its progress since 1970. Thus the nature of this study is to analyse to what extent Zafar can be claimed as a Transnational character by comparing his situation with other two immigrants; Rahman‟s unnamed narrator and Cole‟s protagonist, Julius in Open City (2011). The study also depicts Afghanistan as a neo-colonial land that has to deal with western intrigues in forms opposed to Postcolonialism.