Exploring Postmodern Aspects in Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows

Abstract

Kamila Shamsie’s “Burnt Shadows” (2009) provides a fragmentary account of some
most important socio-politic historical events through the journey of a hibakusha,
Hiroko Tanaka. This Pakistani English novel is written in a new literary style which
creates difficulty for the novice readers. Though the novel has been analysed from
several perspectives yet rarely any critic ever describes the novel’s new literary
trends. Therefore, to make the text explicable and understandable for the novice
readers, this paper explores the selected novel in the light of postmodern literary
theory. Relying on textual analysis, the study finds that the narrative embodies
multiple elements/characteristics of postmodernism including questionable narrator
and fragmented characters. Likewise, pastiche technique, temporal distortion and
magical realism etc. the dominant postmodern literary aspects, are thematically
present in the novel as well.