Multiplicity, Trauma, and Polyphonic Narratives: A Postmodern Analysis of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Mohsin Naqvi’s Home Boy

Abstract

This paper presents the postmodern representation of trauma in the creative works of Mohsin Hamid and H.M. Naqvi, looking at their development of multiplicity and polyphonic narrative techniques to portray dismembered selves and collective amnesia in postcolonial settings. Through Hamid’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and Naqvi’s “Home Boy”, this paper examines how the authors abandon the linearity of non-fiction, use unreliable narrators, and intertextuality to break standard narrative forms and demonstrate the jarring effects of trauma around the world. The paper attempts to show that the works of Hamid and Naqvi integrate the use of postmodern literary style in articulating the psychological and socio-political impact of violence, migration, and cultural displacement on the globalized world. The guiding thread of this research paper  is the polyphony of trauma, or the ability of Schulman’s trauma to contain and interact with multiple criticisms, stems from her intellectual and social marginalization along with the interplay of various identities and voices in a single poem. The analysis explores how Nagid’s Changez and Naqvi’s Chuck, while performing their complex identities, demonstrate the multifaceted nature of identity politics within the context of hybrid citizenship and the ensuing cultural dilemmas from ethnic and national loyalty.