Precolonial Stance In The Short Story 'My Son The Fanatic'
PRE-COLONIAL STANCE IN “MY SON A FANATIC”
BY HANIF KURESHI
SUBMITTED TO: MA’AM TEHSEEN
Researcher:
Tehseen Fatima Mahwish Saif Hassnain
M.PHIL English Literature
Department of English
POSTGraduate Studies
UNIVERSITY OF LAHORE
SARGODHA
Introduction
This study aims to specify the “Precolonial Stance” in the short story“My son the fanatic” that is one of the most celebrated works by the Anglo-Pakistani author Hanif Kureshi. Born on December 5, 1954 in Bromley, England, to an Indian father and an English mother, Hanif Kureishi grew up experiencing first-hand the racial and cultural clashes that he addresses in most of his work. The inspiration for
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In Colonial and Postcolonial Fiction: An Anthology it is stated that this story comes from the collection Love In A Blue Time (1997) , whose ten stories provide a far-reaching look at contemporary life in London. This narrative takes an ironic stance by reversing the predictable conflict between father and the son and it offers no solution to their dilemma.
Evachrist in Don Bosco penned that the short story is well written and informative. It does address an important subject; the urge for us to belong somewhere, might lead us onto an unexpected road and that we should not be too hasty to condemn other people’s need to do the same, even though it might be in a different way than we had liked.
Although not intended as such upon its publication almost fifteen years ago, Hanif Kureishi’s “My Son the Fanatic” can now be viewed as a remarkably prescient and indeed prophetic examination of home-grown radicalism and extremism. Kureishi’s is a story that deals with the incredibly complex notions of individual and national identity, ethnicity and race, among many others, through the relationship between a father and his son is inscribed in an album “Sound
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