The Politics Of Home In Kiran Desai's The Inheritance Of Loss

This thesis is intended to interrogate the notion of “home” as represented in Kiran Desai's Booker Award winner The Inheritance of Loss(2006)with reference to the politics of home of Rosemary Marangoly George and relevant postcolonial theories.Focusing on the experiences of the diasporic Indians in the novel,the thesis first analyzes the spatial connection between home and migration,then maps the changing comprehension of “home” with the characters' cultural identity,and finally discusses Desai' s unique writing strategies in constructing home.It is hoped that the investigation of the indispensable role of “home” will reassess the understanding of belonging against the backdrop of globalization.First of all,the thesis examines the spatial shift between “house” and travel in forming diasporic Indians' dilemma of home.The disciplinary “house” drives the characters to never-ending travel,thus exposes them to enormous cultural differences and solitary wandering in homesickness.The diaspora group's unhomeliness is rooted in the incompatible gap between the remoted home country and foreign land.Then,the thesis discusses the cultural memory of the diasporic Indians,interrogating how they construct and inherit their imagination of home carrying Indian cultural “luggage” as silent witnesses.Finally,this thesis explores the ways in which Kiran Desai composes the diaspora's imagination of home with hybrid language,multiple narrative strategies and rich personal immigration backgrounds.Place,memory and writing are vital elements in Kiran Desai's politics of home.Her representation of home in diaspora is an encouraging and enlightening exploration for identity and belongingness to the “homeless” diasporians in the globalized world.