Mar 09, 2006 07:06 PM
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(Updated Mar 09, 2006 07:06 PM)
Amitav Ghosh's Shadow Lines was published in 1988, four years after the sectarian violence that shook New Delhi in the aftermath of the Prime minister, Indira Gandhi's assassination.
The narrative technique is fragmentary and an accumulation of the narrator's experiences in the form of memories which move backwards and forwards.The novel is set against the backdrop of historical events:
1.Swadeshi movement
2.Second World War
3.Partition of Country
4.Communal riots of 1963-64 in Dhaka and Calcutta
Amitav Ghosh has used a very simple language to give out his message to the readers.
The title is significant as the narrator talks about the Shadow Lines between Nations which can be transcended through emotional bonding and relationships as is significant in the case of Datta-Chowdharis and Tresawsens and later Prices.Also, it talks about the narrator's journey from innocence into the realization that nationalisn,national identity and borders are all shadow lines.The grandmother has a typical state dominated view about nationalism,what she is unable to realize that one can be unsafe even in one's own country.
