Representation of political Islam in recent fiction with particular reference to John Updike’s terrorist, Pamuk’s Snow, Hanif Kureishi’s the black album and Khaled Hosseini’s the kite runner

Abstract

In recent years, a large number of writers have shown keen interest in exploring the relationship between various aspects of Islam and literature. In critical writing this has not been explored fully till now. However, during the last three decades from the 1980s till date a flood of literature representing political Islam appeared. Most of the works representing political Islam that emerged after the 9/11 incident received extensive critical acclaim and reached a broad audience in varied strata of society. This study examines the representation of political Islam in recent fiction with particular emphasis on the selected fictional works Terrorist (2006), Snow (2002; translated in 2004), The Black Album (1995) and The Kite Runner (2003) by John Hoyer Updike (1932-2009), Orhan Pamuk (1952- ), Hanif Kureishi (1954- ), and Khaled Hosseini (1965- ) respectively. All these authors have treated radical Islamists in their selected works, which had a major impact on the postmodern British and American literary scenes either a little before or after the 9/11 attacks. Their works have pointed out the different issues which made both their appearance and accomplishment possible. These writers have tried to deal with issues of Islamic identity and political control through the appropriation of a certain kind of interpretation of Islam. They have chosen to talk about some key Islamic concepts such as faith , salaah , jihad , suicide , scarf , pardha , Jannah / Paradise , houris , infidel , kafir , and hellfire in their novels under discussion. They have also focussed on certain aspects which are prohibited in Islam like hoarding of wealth, licentious relationship, adultery, wine, drugs, and homosexuality. All those issues that political Islam talks about are also tackled by these novelists in one way or the other. However, the most important argument centres on two aspects: representation of political Islam in recent fiction, and the relationship between political Islam and the current literary tradition