The Legends of Khasak: A Postcolonial Reading

The book makes a postcolonial reading of the novel, The Legends of Khasak with a counter perspective to the ideological, cultural and political positions inculcated in Indian society in the wake of colonialism and modernity. The protagonist, Ravi presents a poignant image of the modern man beset with the complex issues of identity, both collective and individual. The book unravels the labyrinths of his subjective ambience where he traces and records his cultural and political historiography. In the novel, Vijayan places the disintegration of modern citizenship and the political reasoning of national modernity in the background of an idyllic antiquity that is cast through a transcendental language. Counterpoising the uncertain and ambiguous world with a mystical/mythical world, Vijayan shows the triumph of an uninstitutionalised, pristine and pre modern vestigial world over the socio­political forces of modernity and nationality.