Diaspora Consciousness And Sensibility:a Postcolonial Reading Of Nadeem Aslam’s Maps For Lost Lovers

Ever since the publication of his first novel Season of the Rainbirds Nadeem Aslam has become a prominent figure in the world of postcolonial contemporary British fiction, particularly Diasporic literature. His works have earned a great acclaim in the literary world. Maps for Lost Lovers has been a master piece ever since its publication in2004. It took Aslam more than a decade to complete this novel with perfection in theme and style.The novel has been studied as a piece of postcolonial fiction and analyzed in one perspective or another. This study, on the other hand, explores the novel in a broader perspective of Disapora consciousness and Sensibility characterized by a nostalgic feeling for the homeland and a sense of alienation from the host culture and land, an effort to stay connected to the religious and cultural roots that might lead the subjects towards orthodoxy in religion and manipulation at the hands of the religious leaders. The thesis also deals with the representation of Muslim community in a diasporic context. The subjects, while dealing with their nostalgia and religious/cultural conflicts, have to deal with an all encompassing psychological fear of new language and culture, loss of family and relationship and the failures in dealing with all such situations. Even though the diasporic writings are disconsolate and gloomy most of the time, Aslam has provided an implicit solution to these problems as explored in this thesis. The last part of the thesis gives the reader an implied solution to overcome the feeling of loss, suffering and rootlessness. Aslam has implicitly suggested through the course of the novel that love being a universal phenomenon might be a candle that brightens the lives of people surrounding it. Love goes beyond the ethnic and cultural differences to bind its followers in a cosmopolitan notion of loving and being loved, at the same time introducing its reader to an ongoing hand in hand phenomenon of Hijr (separation) that cannot be separated from love.As Aslam has mentioned in one of his interviews, he has given a text to the reader, now it’s the duty of the reader to interpret it in any possible way that he can. In view of this remark, this thesis is an effort to interpret the novel in a completely new perspective.