Leila Essa (KCL) - 2015-16 Students
leila.essa@kcl.ac.uk

German and South Asian Partition Literature

In my PhD project, I compare contemporary novels that address the German East/West division and the South Asian partition respectively. Exploring how different authors subvert the limited notion of a fixed national identity by highlighting the continuous heterogeneity of different societies and identities, I will examine the extent to which partition fiction from different cultural zones derives its power from a pool of shared literary tropes. A critical comparison of literatures that are specifically national and yet transcend ideas of nationhood, this project sets out to probe the interpretive value of placing the theme of partition in a transnational framework.