Postcolonial Dystopia in Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines

Abstract

This project focuses on Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines (1988), a story of a young boy growing up in Calcutta and later on Delhi and London. It deals with the negative utopia which is characterized by authorian or totalitarian form of government. Dystopia usually features different kinds of repressive social system, lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expression and constant state of war-fare and violence. It also explores how society is not always conducted by peace and utopian vision. Rather society is also often characterized by mass poverty, violence as well as communal riots. That's why, this is dystopia portraying society in postcolonial perspective.