The study attempts to analyze Margaret Atwood Oryx and Crake in the light of Baudrillard Theory. The discussion is based on Baudrillard theory of Hyperreality and Simulacra. Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake (2003) takes place in a future time where there are scientific progresses. The protagonist of the story is Snowman who used to be called Jimmy and who is the son of two genetic scientists. Snowman lives near some creatures that are called Crakers. When jimmy is near starvation, he decides to search for food in the ruins of RejoovenEsence. Jimmy and Oryx develop a relationship. The human race is wiped out and Jimmy realizes that all of these are planned by Crake. Crake says that the three of them are immune to the virus. Crake kills Oryx and he is killed by Jimmy. Jimmy also gets a disease and finally finds three humans, two men and a woman, and he does not know whether to kill them or become friend with them. He makes up his mind and goes towards them and the story ends there. It can be said that there is elimination of hyperreality in the novel as there is the decline of civilization. Baudrillard’s hyperreality explained the situation in the consumer society in which the real was lost. Thus, it can be said that the catastrophe in the novel has resulted in the elimination of the civilization, consumer society and thus hyperreality in the consumer society. But it should be pointed out that there is also hyperreality created due to the catastrophe because things are no longer what they used to be and some human made structures have lost their function, similar to the map in the Borges fable pointed out by Baudrillard.

Travel writings by Western visitors of the Orient have often been rebuffed for disseminating a stereotypical discourse on the people and the culture of the East. The rationale for the collective dismissal of such narratives, however, is built upon a limited canon whose myopic perspective creates a monolithic Orient. It is argued that since this dominant discourse leaves nearly no room for non-conformism, it has conveniently overlooked a large body of travel writings of western writers that adopt a non-Orientalist approach to appreciate cultural differences. To pursue this argument, the present study aims to explore Jürgen Wasim Frembgen's At the Shrine of the Red Sufi: Five Days & Nights on Pilgrimage in Pakistan (2011) to examine how the autobiographical narrator's travel accounts present an alternative narrative about the East that subverts prevailing discourses on travelogues as apparatuses to reinforce colonial/Western norms. To achieve this goal, the study benefits from Debbie Lisle's (2006) theories on the cosmopolitan vision of a travel writer as well as Edward Said's (1978) theory of Orientalism. Frembgen's cosmopolitan vision throughout the narrative neutralizes negative perceptions about Muslim communities in Pakistan as uncultivated and declining by offering a counter view of the country that underscores its vibrant and positively transformative qualities. The celebration of Eastern culture and religion in Frembgen's travel writing indicates the need for the re-examination of the Orientalist thought that has, wittingly or unwittingly, dismissed a significant segment of western works about the east in order to legitimize its theoretical and hypothetical cases.

The phenomena of migration, displacement, and social integration have greatly impacted discourses on the interpretation of cultural translation, which is widely perceived as an ongoing reciprocal process of exchange, integration, and transformation. Drawing upon Homi K. Bhabha’s theoretical notions, such as liminality, hybridity, and third space, the present study explores the poetics and politics of cultural translation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies (1999). More specifically, we examine the multiple ways in which the existing similarities and differences between dominant and marginal cultures influence diasporic individuals and communities and the various ways the migrants respond to their conflicting conditions in the diaspora. A close reading of the three stories of “Mrs. Sen’s,” “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” and “The Third and Final Continent” reveals that while the liminal situation has the potential to become a site of conflicts in the lives of the migrant subjects, it germinates a condition of hybridity that embraces the diversity of cultures and their blurry borders with one another in the third space. This pattern is perfectly demonstrated through the three characters of Mrs. Sen, Lilia’s mother, and Mala. Their heterogeneous experiences of integration underscore the idea that when two disparate cultural realities confront one another, the female characters welcome a new space where they succeed in negotiating and translating their cultures.

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