Intertextuality, Multiple Voices, and Ambiguity in P.Sivakami’s Author’s Notes and Nawal El Saadawi’s The Fall of the Imam

Abstract

P. Sivakami and Nawal El Saadawiare bureaucrats-turned writers who espouse the cause of women who are victims of patriarchy and display remarkable agency and purpose in subverting the systems of oppression prevalent in their respective local settings. The protagonists of the novels selected for the study ultimately succumb to the system, but they do not give up without a fight. The novels chosen for analysis in this paper are P. Sivakami’s Author’s Notes and Nawal El Saadawi’s The Fall of the Imam. This paper analyses the novels from a postmodern perspective and attempts to bring out the elements of intertextuality, multiple voices and ambiguity in these two novels.