The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019)
Contemporary novels about refugees often question the appropriateness of traditional narrative forms to relate stories of forced migration which involve a fragmentation of the self and of one’s sense of reality. Writers opt instead for forms which are as disjointed as the experience of refugees them...
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2022-11-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/13269 |
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| author | Vanessa Guignery |
| author_facet | Vanessa Guignery |
| author_sort | Vanessa Guignery |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Contemporary novels about refugees often question the appropriateness of traditional narrative forms to relate stories of forced migration which involve a fragmentation of the self and of one’s sense of reality. Writers opt instead for forms which are as disjointed as the experience of refugees themselves. This paper explores the precarious balance between a poetics of rupture and an aesthetics of connectivity in two novels about refugees: Exit West (2017) by Mohsin Hamid and Travelers (2019) by Helon Habila. It first examines the strategies developed by both authors to destabilize form in order to reflect the refugees’ shattering ordeals during and after their forced displacements. The multiplicity of stories as well as the shifts in focalization and narrative modes testify to the impossibility of inscribing refugees’ experiences within a single coherent and homogeneous pattern. However, Hamid and Habila also draw from the potentialities of the novelistic genre to devise formal ways of connecting apparently disparate story lines and thereby suggest possibilities for cross-cultural solidarity between refugees who share a common condition of vulnerability. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-e6cee2bc49b1475dac407d5ee283cf4a |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2022-11-01 |
| publisher | Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Sillages Critiques |
| spelling | doaj-art-e6cee2bc49b1475dac407d5ee283cf4a2025-01-30T13:47:31ZengCentre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"Sillages Critiques1272-38191969-63022022-11-013210.4000/sillagescritiques.13269The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019)Vanessa GuigneryContemporary novels about refugees often question the appropriateness of traditional narrative forms to relate stories of forced migration which involve a fragmentation of the self and of one’s sense of reality. Writers opt instead for forms which are as disjointed as the experience of refugees themselves. This paper explores the precarious balance between a poetics of rupture and an aesthetics of connectivity in two novels about refugees: Exit West (2017) by Mohsin Hamid and Travelers (2019) by Helon Habila. It first examines the strategies developed by both authors to destabilize form in order to reflect the refugees’ shattering ordeals during and after their forced displacements. The multiplicity of stories as well as the shifts in focalization and narrative modes testify to the impossibility of inscribing refugees’ experiences within a single coherent and homogeneous pattern. However, Hamid and Habila also draw from the potentialities of the novelistic genre to devise formal ways of connecting apparently disparate story lines and thereby suggest possibilities for cross-cultural solidarity between refugees who share a common condition of vulnerability.https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/13269fragmentationvulnerabilitypostcolonial literaturerefugeeprecariousnessconnections |
| spellingShingle | Vanessa Guignery The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019) Sillages Critiques fragmentation vulnerability postcolonial literature refugee precariousness connections |
| title | The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019) |
| title_full | The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019) |
| title_fullStr | The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019) |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019) |
| title_short | The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019) |
| title_sort | precarious balance of refugees rupture and connectivity in mohsin hamid s exit west 2017 and helon habila s travelers 2019 |
| topic | fragmentation vulnerability postcolonial literature refugee precariousness connections |
| url | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/13269 |
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