Author(s): Fatma KALPAKLI
Amitav Ghosh believes that all the borders are artificial in the world and he tries to illustrate this thesis in his novel, in In An Antique Land. He suggests that cultural and historical experiences constitute the common ground for people to establish a community and to enjoy the sense of belonging. Thus, shared cultural and historical experiences create a bond among people, not the borders, which are drawn artificially by the politicians. And in today’s transnational world, Ghosh believes that people are global citizens. With all these assumptions in his mind, he studies history of Egypt and tells his memoirs as a PhD student there in his semi-biographical novel, In An Antique Land. As it is also given in the novel, both India and Egypt have had British colonial experience and they have witnessed to the change of their national borders and have gone through these tough historical experiences. After redrawing the borders in Africa and India, then the issues of the construction of identity or national identity and population exchange begin to emerge in these newly defined places with their newly established borders. Yet, it seems impossible to cut the cultural bonds all of a sudden among these people in the recently constructed nation-states all over the world. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the concepts of trans/nationalism1 , globalization2 , b/orders, g/localization3 , us&them attitude and how they are perceived through the eyes of Amitv Ghosh in his semi-biographical work, in In An Antique Land.
The Journal of International Social Research received 8982 citations as per Google Scholar report
