The Architecture of Alienation: A Comparative Study of the “Internal” and “External” Other in Noor Zaheer’s At Home in Enemy Land and V. S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness

Author

Shital Deshmukh

Abstract

 This paper examines the construction of the “internal” and “external” other in Noor Zaheer’s At Home in Enemy Land and V. S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness. Drawing on postcolonial frameworks, it explores how alienation is produced through encounters with cultural, national, and historical difference. While Zaheer’s narrative foregrounds the internalization of otherness shaped by Partition and shared histories across India and Pakistan, Naipaul’s work presents the external other through a critical and often estranged engagement with India. The study argues that alienation in both texts functions as an “architecture” a structured yet evolving condition shaped by memory, identity, and spatial experience. Through comparative analysis, the paper highlights how travel writing reveals the complexity of self–other relations in postcolonial contexts.

Keywords

Alienation, otherness, postcolonial identity, travel writing, Noor Zaheer, V. S. Naipaul

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References

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