Travel and/as Travail: Diasporic Dislocations in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

This article looks at two novels exploring the pains and gains of the immigrant experience. Both By the Sea and The Inheritance of Loss feature protagonists struggling to build their lives anew in a foreign land. I discuss them in relation to some of the key trends in postcolonial studies, arguing that Gurnah's and Desai's texts provide a necessary "re-grounding" to some of the more romanticizing tendencies in writing on diaspora and dislocation. I also consider how they might be seen in relation to ongoing debates about globalization, suggesting both provide timely reminders that celebrations of "fluidity and flow" are often only applicable to a privileged few. By attending to the material realities of bodies, both individual and collective, and to specific geo-political spaces, both Gurnah and Desai shift our readerly focus from the indeterminacies of "globalization" to the actualities of "glocalization".The only measure, sooner or later, which is going to stop immigration and stop large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans dying on the way to get over here is to get very tough with those coming over. Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats. (Nick Griffin) 1The gradual retreat of national frontiers across Europe has not only fostered a culture of inclusion, unchecked movement and borderless reunification,

Of Basement Kitchens and Filthy Lodges: Spaces in Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Hage’s Cockroach

“…It investigates the representation of marginalized people, whether they are considered subalterns, natives, minorities, or immigrants (377). Masterson (2010) studies the novel from a postcolonial perspective (410). He focuses on Biju's struggles to have a respectable life in a foreign land.…”