REREADING KIRAN DESAI’S THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS THROUGH THE LENS OF POSTCOLONIAL ECOCRITICISM

Abstract

Postcolonial ecocriticism is one of the subfields within postcolonial literary studies. It brings postcolonial and ecological issues together as a means of challenging the imperial modes of social and environmental exploitation. My endeavour in this paper is to explore Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2006, through the lens of postcolonial ecocriticism. Set in the backdrop of rising insurgency in Nepal, the novel illuminates the postcolonial issues of quest for identity, pain of exile etc. on the one hand and environmental crises on the other and shows how the postcolonial crises are inextricably connected with ecological crises.