Salman Rushdie

Fury

Poenaru Adina
Irish Studies MA
2nd year

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 “Postcolonial literature (or "Post-colonial literature", sometimes called "New English
Literature(s)") is literature concerned with the political and cultural independence of people
formerly subjugated in colonial empires, and the literary expression of postcolonialism.” 1
Works of literature belonging to authors such as Salman Rushdie are considered to be a part
of this literary movement. Authors within this category make use of a traditional narrative that
subtly speaks about real accurate historical situations. They confront matters such as the
struggle the find and maintain an identity, the struggle of overcoming the past and reconciling
and looking to the future, the invasion of modern culture that overpowers old traditions, etc.
One of the main characteristics of postcolonial literature as defined by critics lies in
the “misuse of power and exploitation. Even though the large power ceases to control them as
a colony, the settlers still seem to poses power over the natives. [2] The main question here;
who really is in power here, why, and how does an independence day really mean
independence?”2 Traits of postcolonial literature are strongly more evident in Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children, but the subject matter itself finds its way to one degree or another in
many of his other novels. In her book, Violent Belongings, Kavita Daiya mentions Rushdie’s
importance as a literary representative of the effects of colonialism. “Salman Rushdie’s novel
Midnight’s Children (1981) and Yash Chopra’s popular Bollywood film Veer Zaara (2004;
discussed in Chapter Five) are especially interesting works in their representation of
postcolonial national experience in South Asia, and of the suffering masculinities they code as
heroic citizenship[…]Rushdie’s return to the meaning and effects of Partition marks the
diasporic turn to questions about national history and memory, a turn paralleled by subsequent
work by feminists, subaltern studies historians and anthropologists on Partition. In Salman
Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children, the story of the male narrator Saleem Sinai’s body,
“buffeted by too much history,” becomes an allegory of a divided subcontinent in which the
past as Partition is continually reiterated in the present.”3 The first time Rushdie had written a
character inspired from his own life was with Midnight’s Children, and the second and final
time as admitted by the author was with writing Fury.
In Rushdie’s Fury for example, although in a more subtle manner not necessarily as
the main topic of the novel, there are elements characteristic of postcolonial literature. The
fictional situation in Liliput-Blefuscu is the mirror image of the situation of Fiji at the time.
Although the conflict between the indigenous people and the ‘colonisers’ is not the main issue
of the novel, it does occupy an important place within the narrative, acting as its climax. This
fact alone draws the necessary attention to the situation in real life Fiji by means of the
fictional nation in the book. The injustices that have dwelled upon the native inhabitants of
the region reach the point of rebellion. The novel explores the issue of the struggle for power,
of dominance of one force over another on many levels throughout this literary work.
Salman Rushdie is mostly known for his second novel, Midnight’s Children and for
his most controversial work, The Satanic Verses that lead to the proclamation of a death
sentence (fatwa) on behalf of the Islamic community. His eight novel, Fury, is one of his
1
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Post-colonialism+in+literature
2
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Post-colonialism+in+literature
3
Kavita Daiya, Violent Belongings. Partition, Gender and National Culture in Postcolonial India, Temple
University Press, Philadelphia, 2008, Ch. 2, p. 44

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lesser acclaimed works and has been under immense criticism. The main issues that have been
brought up by critics of this literary work circle around topics such as over use of biography
in a way that the author presumably glorifies himself, over use of references from American
culture, extremely caricatured protagonists and an overall over flooded narrative that does not
allow the text to breathe. Yet for all these apparent flaws other literary critics have found
arguments in favor of the choices the author made while constructing this novel.
As the title to evidently states, this novel also revolves around the topic of fury, even more so,
around the essence of fury, not only on an individual level but also on a collective level.
Almost every single character bears within him a feeling that can only be defined as fury.
With Malik Solanka we discover many distinct types of fury that even he himself manages to
observe. At first there is the fury of his first creation being taken away from him and
transformed into a media monster portraying everything that he despises. This leads to various
states of anger and depression that culminate in the night he stood above his wife and child
holding a knife. The event caused him to abandon his life and run across the ocean to America
in hopes of losing himself in the franticness of New York City. Once here, he is still unable to
win the battle with his demons until he finds release in the arms of the beautiful Neela. To her
he manages to confess that in his youth he had been molested by his step-father and saved by
the father of a friend. By talking of this traumatic event in his childhood he finally succeeds in
releasing himself of the fury connected to it, of the anger towards his molester, towards his
mother for not interfering and his savor for leaving. His demons associated with the ‘loss’ of
Little Brain he manages to overcome with the help of another woman in his life, Mila Milo.
As she teaches him that the process of creation must be seen as a serious way of playing, he
comes across a new found strength in returning to art and becoming a creator once more. The
climax of emotional state takes place in his own bedroom when he is faced with confronting
the fury of the three women in his life, his wife, Mila and Neela as they all come together to
confront him, his past and present all in sight: “the outrageous anger of the protagonist Malik
Solanka is often described as a visitation by the three screeching and voracious,
sexuallycharged furies of classical mythology.”4 He sees them standing there over his
nakedness, the three Grecian furies of his life, and witnesses the loss of all of them at once.
Fury is manifested in different forms in other characters. In Mila there is the fury over
the loss of her father, over their forbidden relationship, the loss of her mother and finally the
most predominant the betrayal of Malik when he turns to another woman. The man to which
she turned after losing Solanka, although a less obvious character is also an individual fuelled
by anger. His fury is one with violent manifestations, born from his miserable childhood.
Neela’s fury is a very subtle one, born from the injustice that had been done to her people and
she overcomes it by paying the ultimate price, of giving her life. Malik’s wife, a woman that
in his own words had never manifested any fury, in the end releases all the anger that had
been bottled up inside when she appears in his bedroom and confronts him for his behavior
towards her, towards the abandonment of their son and their life together. Other characters
overcome by fury are the three murderers in the novel that were so overcome with violent
sexual fantasies had killed two of their girlfriends and murdered the third out of fear of being
discovered. Fury is also manifested within Malik’s friends that he had abandoned when
leaving, and is expressed to him several times in phone calls and ultimately with an act of
violence towards him on the ‘fateful’ night when all the furies hovered around him in his
bedroom.
There are also instances of collective fury within the novel. Firstly that of the city of
New York. Malik Solanka can almost feel it as it hung heavily on the entire urban habitat. The

4
Stephen Hart, Wen-Chin Ouyang, A Companion to Magical Realism, Athenaeum Press Ltd., 2005, p.206

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mass fury in Liliput-Belfescu is a violent manifestation of rage and anger of a people that had
been under rule for too long. Critics have underlined the fact that the nation in question was in
reality the image of Fiji and their situation at the time.
The main character that had been completely untouched by fury was Asmaan,
Solanka’s son. Throughout the novel he yearns the affection of his father, never condemning
him for leaving, never seeing his actions as an abandonment. He is innocent and pure in his
beliefs that his father will return to him with gifts and love. And indeed in the end, we find
Solanka in the park where his son plays, observing him from afar and being overwhelmed by
a feeling of peace and love towards him that he feels the urge to reveal himself. He goes out
to a bouncy castle and jumps on it higher and higher, yelling louder and louder to his son, so
that he may notice him, and that they may be finally reunited. Solanka finds love in the
innocence of his son, the only person that never gave up on him and never gave up on the
hope that he will certainly return to him. Rushdie makes this final moment an epic one, by
referencing a fictitious poem found in Fitzgerald’s The Side of Paradise. The image of
bouncing higher and higher wearing a golden hat so that he may be noticed by the one he
loves. This action of bouncing ever higher by Solanka to attract the attention of his son, is a
reflection of the times when Asmaan used to jump on his bed full of joy.
Rushdie had been harshly criticized that his main character in this novel is based on
himself and that by doing so he would be regarded as an amazing intellectual and a gifted
lover. The author admitted in later interviews that the creation of the character of Malik
Solanka is indeed rooted in his own personal experiences but emphasizes on the fact that
although it was born with similarities of his own life, it grew into a different individual that
does not resemble himself in any way. To further underline this distinction he points out the
rather shocking event in the novel were professor Solanka is standing with a kitchen knife
over the sleeping bodies of his wife and child. Aside from Solanka, critics have pointed out
that this character is not the only one rooted in Rushdie’s real life, but so are most of his other
characters and main events. The small difference of age between Solanka and Rushdie of only
a couple of years, the fact that they both left their wives and children behind to move to New
York, that once there they both met and fell in love with a beautiful Indian woman to whom
the novel is dedicated and so on and so forth. All these similarities were underlined as
negative elements in the novel under the suspicion that their presence only meant to glorify
the author in one way or another. Other commentators of the novel see these biographical
elements with different eyes, as being part of the entire literary purpose of the text and that
they are only there to emphasize on the relationship between fiction and reality and the way
the two sometimes invade each other’s world. Isn’t this the purpose of the magical realism as
a literary technique? To fill the gap between two incompatible worlds?
The question regarding the connection between fiction and reality and the relationship
between author and creation is thoroughly explored in the novel and stands as a focal point in
the text. Everything that goes on within this literary piece of fiction has to do with the way
real life is influenced by fiction, the way fiction is influenced by real life, the way characters
and real individuals act, react and are portrayed both in the real and fictional life. There is a
constant feeling of doubling in the text as the fictional characters created by Solanka are
inspired by his surroundings and real individuals in the novel take on traits of fictional
characters. Fiction invades reality.
The characters inspired by Rushdie’s real life turn more and more into fiction as they
evolve in the novel, while characters created within the novel become intensely more real
within the text. Let us take for instance the character of Neela, supposedly inspired by

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Rushdie’s real life love Padma which he had met after moving to New York. Although she is
inspired by the real Padma, the way in which she is described over and over throughout the
text transforms her into a cliché at one point and even a caricature in other instances. She is
described as this incredibly beautiful woman whose immensely stunning appearance is only
perfected by a scar she wears on her arm. Up to now Neela is a character that only amazes
with her looks and seems even more realistic due to the admitted perfection of her scar. But
we see her later as she appears in public places and the effect she has on all the men around
her. As they notice her they are all inevitably struck by her beauty in such a profound way that
they either fall, trip, run into obstacles or even smash their cars in traffic due to their
inexplicable and sudden attraction to this wondrous woman. Such exaggerations that are to be
found in the novel in absolutely every instance of her appearance turn this female character
into a caricature of a femme fatale. To further immerse her persona into the realm of fiction
she is constructed as belonging to a small country by the name of Liliput-Blefuscu in that is
on the verge of rebellion. The name of the nation taken directly from Jonathan Swift’s,
Gulliver’s Travels, adds to the degree of fiction of the character. In the realm of fiction,
intertextuality breeds “realism”. Neela is well and fully aware of the effect she has on men
and uses this to her advantage. She is a fighter for her country and her goal is to bring
freedom to her people (this also makes of her a bit of a cliché).
Critics have pointed out that Neela as we find her in the novel does not succeed in
being a realistic individual. But the main issue here is whether that is a positive or a negative
fact. The question here is, why should a character be realistic, even more why should an
author be forced to create strictly realistic characters or strictly fictional ones, why should a
novel be labeled only realistic or fantasy and not leave space for a combination of the two?
The character in question is fully aware of her duplicity, physical and mental. She states that
she feels herself as a “disembodied entity living behind the eyes of this extraordinary alien,
her body.”5 She is clearly the product of two distinct halves of apparently different
personalities. On the one side there is her outer appearance that turns her into a caricature or
the epitomic femme fatale and on the other side there is her intellectual self, her warrior side
that has a just and noble cause to fight for, her country, her history and her past to which she
is strongly connected. If the character in question if conscious of her condition and
furthermore, makes use of it to benefit her goals then why is the author of the novel to be
accused of not making her fit only one category? Better yet, as Brian Finney puts it “why do
reviewers try to impose on novelists like Rushdie an artificial frontier between the real and the
unreal?[…] They refuse to recognize that the entire book hovers between realist (or rather
pseudo-realist) and non-realist modes of narration.”6 He points out that author himself in an
interview in 2005 talked on this very topic. Here Rushdie underlines the difference between
types of novels based on the author-reader relationship. Thus in a realist novel it is assumed
that both the reader and the author share a common view of the world where as in a non-
realist novel there is “more a question of tradition, a tradition that does not take the world for
granted.”7 He considers the latter more relevant in today’s world as it offers more
opportunities of exploring and experimenting with the narrative.
The control the author has over his characters is well described by Solanka when
considering the issue of authorship and of owning or disowning of ones creations. He believes
that when he manufactures his dolls (a doll is at the same time caricature, reality and fiction),
5
http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/rushdiefury.html
6
http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/rushdiefury.html
7
http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/rushdiefury.html

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through the entire process of creation he gives them stories to tell, but after the creator has
acknowledged these stories he must let them go to evolve further on their own. They no
longer belong to him. All the characters of the novel are manipulated in the same manner that
Solanka’s dolls are manipulated when he creates them. They start of as being his own
personal creations over which he has complete power. But as they are introduced or even
more, released into the world of reality they begin to take on a life of their own that is a
product of the input that everyone puts into them as they come in contact. The professor’s
doll, Little Brain was his own until the point where the world of media wanted to expand on
her potential as an international cult movement. Once others interfered with her evolution,
once her strings were handled by other hands than that of the original creator, she is
transformed. The way in which the puppet grew into an international symbol to having games
made after her, movies, songs, biographies, talk shows and so on, is a reflection of an
international need for her to evolve in that manner, to be more accessible to a growing
audience. In the creators view she had been perverted into something monstrous and had
drifted away from her intended purpose. She had been taken from the hands of her original
handler and had become a palpable entity to admirers worldwide. She is a commodity.
Subjected to interpretations and alterations to her appearance and behavior, everyone that had
access to her transformed her into their own vision of what she should be. As a result of all
these alterations she becomes a symbol, in fact she becomes a multitude of symbols
depending on what the handlers needs are, she is constantly transforming under the effect of
international desire.
Before discussing the evolution of Solanka’s later creations that were born during his
time in New York, it is important to look upon the origin of his interest in doll making. As we
are told, his passion for miniatures started when on a trip to Amsterdam he came upon some
miniature houses and decors in a museum. He was fascinated with the amount of detail that
went into constructing the miniature houses and their ornamentations. But he was also struck
by the lack of dolls in the houses. The miniatures seemed like perfect little images untouched
by human hand but at the same time empty due to the absence of inhabitants. He started off
his hobby by creating such miniature houses and by breathing life into them by adding dolls
to occupy them. As the hobby grew and developed into an almost full-time occupation he
started giving the dolls more attention and by doing so attaching himself more to them and
creating realistic personalities for each doll. Little Brain was a result of this intense work of
passion. And the televised show aimed at discussing philosophical views and confronting
philosophers was focused around the little feminine character that used her wits and
intelligence to challenge the great thinkers. What started off as just a small series of cultural
exploration, quickly turned into mass-media frenzy as the show gained popularity. Solanka
soon lost control of the doll by giving in to financial rewards and this rapidly resulted in his
breakdown. At this point his private life also suffered and resulted into the knife incident that
determined his to leave his family, friends and entire life behind him. Malik Solanka chose
New York as “refuge” on the consideration that such a city with such a hectic environment
would quickly swallow him and his deep seeded problems.
New York turned out to be the place where he would find his strength to overcome his
fears and constant episodes of fury but more importantly the place where he would rediscover
the power to create. The first character that had a significant impact on him would be Mila
Milo, the queen of the streets. With Mila he finds himself in a strange and complicated
relationship. As we discover she is a huge fan of his work with Little Brain and she even takes
on the appearance of the doll. Throughout their relationship the two open up to each other
more and evolving under a constant and growing sexual tension. To him, she is intimidating
and also fascinating. She opens his eyes to the world of virtual reality and the endless

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possibilities it holds. The sexual tension that neither speak of and both refuse to openly
acknowledge its existence peaks during her visits to his apartment, as Solanka refers to her by
the name of the doll and she refers to him with ‘daddy’. He feels attracted but remains
intensely cerebral analyzing her past and her relationship with her father, ultimately
concluding that she must have seduced him to the point where he had left in a suicidal mission
back to his troubled country of origin in IUGOSVAVIA. But before the relationship is
consumed, Solanka finds himself falling for the beautiful Neela. At this point Mila’s feeling
of betrayal leads her back into the arms of her previous companion, her previous save. In spite
of her personal feeling she offers Malik is the opportunity to create once more. She opens his
eyes to the reality of being a creator and what it truly means to play with one’s creation by
also letting it be accessible to others. Thus the Puppet Kings are born.
With the creation of Gallileo-1 and its inhabitants, Solanka finds himself once more in
the world of doll making. Only this time he is guaranteed full control over the evolution of his
characters. The evolution of his latest creations has a fate similar to that of his first.
International acclaim, a new wave of media frenzy, a new movement embraced by the masses,
only this time the extent of this evolution surpasses his beliefs. The characters come to life in
the form of masks worn by the people of Liliput-Blefuscu and the conflict in the area is
strongly influenced by his creations. If in the story he wrote for his characters, the fight was
between real individuals and the artificial creations, the conflict in the real nation is between
the indigenous and the occupants. The entire plot turns into a complicated amalgam of
questions of whether artificial life is real life and whether all should have the same rights,
translated into the real life conflict in Liliput-Blefuscu. Before exploring the conflict in the
afore mentioned country we must firstly explore the creation process of the ‘fictional’
Galileo-1. Solanka transfers himself into the creator of artificial life on the planet, a doll that
is in his own face. That creator in turn gives life to mechanical creatures that can think, have
moral standards from which to choose, and which later are able to break free from the control
of their creator (just as in a way has Solanka’s previous doll Little Brain ‘managed’ in loose
terms). The other mechanical characters that Malik creates are fictional images of the people
in his life, the women in his life, his wife, Neela, Mila, the friends he has and any other
individuals that he had been in contact with that made a sufficient impression on him that
could be transposed into his latest work of fiction. At this point what we have in this situation
is an original author, Salman Rushdie, which starts of creating a novel with characters
inspired from his own life, one of which, Malik Solanka, does the exact same thing by
creating the characters on Galileo-1 to resemble the people in his life; the process goes even
further as the Puppet King creates the artificial life forms in the shape of those on the planet.
As a result the planet is now filled with ‘real’ characters and ‘mechanized’, ‘artificial’ replicas
of those real individuals. As readers we witness Malik as he explores the possibilities further
and further as he becomes “deliriously entranced by the shadow play possibilities… of two
sets of doubles, the encounters between ‘real’ and ‘real’, ‘real’ and ‘double’, ‘double’ and
‘double’, which blissfully demonstrated the dissolution of the frontiers between the
categories.”8
Rushdie’s message becomes even clearer at this stage in the novel, that a work of
fiction should not be limited, boxed in, and labeled into categories of realist or non-realist; it
should have the freedom and space to explore both worlds at the same time. The evolution of
the plot on Galileo-1 that turns into conflict and a struggle of dominance of real people over
artificial creations speak clearly of the way reality influences fiction and the way fiction
comes back into reality and makes its mark. If at first real life dominated on Galileo-1 and the

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artificial was there only to serve and protect, the tables have been turned, and the real started
to submit to the will of the artificial. The artificial does not stop at overwhelming the real
within Solanka’s story, it escapes its barriers and finds manifestation in the real world of
Malik Solanka. When he finds himself in Liliput-Blefuscu in search of Neela he is amazed to
discover his fictional world come to life in the forms of masks worn by the rebels. As soon as
he sets foot in the country he is seen as an impostor, as he bears the face of the leader,
although he was not wearing a mask. In this land of masked fighters he is the counterfeit.
“Here in the Theatre of Masks the original, the man with no mask, was perceived as the masks
imitator: the creation was the real while the creator was counterfeit.”9
The line between reality and simulation had become blurred almost to the point of
invisibility. The magical has become the reality, the shadow its object and the echo its original
sound. Here, Solanka’s story had developed in an entirely different way; the scenario was
built by those who lived it fully. Liliput-Blefuscu had become a real life interpretation of the
professor’s literary work. Here he had no control over it. Just as any artist is devoid of control
over his creation once it is offered to the masses. No author can control the way in which his
work will be interpreted. The entire act of interpretation belongs solely to the receiver, and
through his eyes and individual concepts, the work takes on different shapes and meanings.
Imprisoned in Liliput-Blefuscu he looks upon the streets and realizes he is watching himself,
his life, being acted out by these actors in masks. In his essay, Furious Simulation, or
Simulated Fury: Salman Rushdie’s ‘Fury’, Brian Finney notes that in an interview Rushdie
stated that all books, to an extent, are products of real life and other fictional works. And just
as this rule applies to literature it also applies to our own lives, because our entire pasts are
actually stories we tell ourselves and that they too are influenced by fiction. The entire novel
is flooded with references to other literary works, and Rushdie claims to have done so in an
attempt to instruct the reader not to forget this crucial fact when reading a novel; that all
novels are in various degrees influenced by previous works and that those works should not
be forgotten or overlooked. The idea is then that any literary work is on some level a work of
reference. This idea is also vividly present and fundamental in Flann O’Brien’s first novel,
At-Swim-Two-Birds, where the narrator explicitly states this fact. And the novel in question is
referred to in Fury at one point when talking of Joyce, and later of Finn Mac Cool a character
in O’Brien’s novel.
Aside from literary mentions, the presence of which we have explained, the text also
consists of overwhelming references to elements of American culture such as: Disney
characters, game characters (Lara Croft), movies, music, and so on. The reason behind the
presence of these elements is far different than that of literary remarks. One of the main issues
of the novel revolves around the atmosphere in America, and especially in its City of Lights,
that is New York. Rushdie gave his character, Solanka a reason for choosing that particular
place in the world to escape to in hopes of losing his demons. New York in Malik Solanka’s
eyes is the city that devours, it is omnivorous, and it will eat him whole along with his
demons. The city stands as the epitome of all that is truly American. This urban habitat is
flooded with symbols of the American life style, as is the novel; both are so overwhelmingly
besieged with these elements that it makes it hard to breathe, thus the text itself is difficult to
read, and the plot unwinds itself with struggle, as not even the characters have time to truly
develop.
The novel is crowded with themes ranging from: fury in all its shapes, criticism of the
American culture and life style, author-reader relationship, author-character relationship,
portrayal of women, letting go of tradition, breaking the rules of literary traditions, the
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concepts of real and fiction, the relationship between our lives, our past and the constant
presence of fiction within them, etc. All these topics struggle to dominate within the novel and
this is why many find it either difficult to read, ridiculous or pretentious. But nevertheless it
stands as a novel in literature that managed to overcome traditional barriers. Fury is the
violent American image reflected upon itself. The alternative world of entertainment is
America’s every day fiction. Its realism is a magical one. Its fiction is the every-day truth.
“Fury has all the elements that make Rushdie’s fiction so memorable—the dazzling wordplay
and satiric verbal gymnastics, the co-opting of references from high and low culture, the
seamless interweaving of the comic and the tragic.”10

Bibliography:
1. Nick Rennison, Contemporary British Novelists, Routledge, 2005

2. Brian Finney, Furious Simulation, or Simulated Fury: Salman Rushdie’s Fury

http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/rushdiefury.html
3. Stephen Hart, Wen-chin Ouyang, A Companion to Magical Realism, Athenaeum
Press Ltd., 2005
4. Kavita Daiya, Violent Belongings. Partition, Gender and National Culture in Postcolonial
India, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2008

5. http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Post-colonialism+in+literature

10
Nick Rennison, Contemporary British Novelists, Routledge, 2005, p. 120

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6. Maggie Ann Bowers, Magic(al) Realism, Routledge, 2004

7. Tim Mitchell, Culture across Borders, Middle East Report, No. 159, Popular
Culture (Jul. - Aug., 1989). http://www.jstor.org/stable/3012512 Consulted Jan.
13th 2010
8. Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic, Transition, No. 64 (1994), Indiana
University Press.

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