Kazi Shahidul Islam

Abstract: With the popular idea of literary narrative undergoing a drastic change in recent times, contemporary Anglophone fiction aspires after a position in the still Eurocentric world literature beyond the evolving off-spins of the postcolonial, and concurrently meets the urgency of representation/self-representation by significantly subverting the longstanding East-West dichotomy as critiqued by Edward Said. Specifically, the post-9/11 geopolitical turmoil has seen a reflex proliferation of Anglophone fiction works by authors of/from the East that evolve a political stance of literary narratives. This literary politics is necessarily entangled with nagging glocal concerns while it also inherently confronts us-versus-them hegemonies both within domestic and across national frontiers. The dynamics of this politics owes mainly to the newly acquired postnational fluid identity of Anglophone fiction authors that offers a greater global consciousness — in abeyance of neo-nationalistic biases — about overarching power issues like post-political biopolitics, populism, neoliberal authoritarianism, historical amnesia etc. A corollary of this research is that the fiction critics of contemporary Anglophone works by authors of/from the East should look beyond exophonic ethicality and diasporic issues in order to appreciate how these authors, who cherish a postnational stance aiming at a wider readership in the West, contribute to contemporary world/global literature.

Keywords: Literary politics, Anglophone fiction, fictional representation, postnational, glocal concerns

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