A native focalizer’s corrective narration can historicize what baffles a Western protagonist.

Evidence

Yet rather than leave us “at home” in the unhomely space of Skelly’s disoriented groping after meaning, the novel switches to the perspective offered by Najeeb—Skelly’s literal and figurative translator—to historicize the things the American sees only from a distance. For instance, Najeeb “translates” a legless beggar who shuffles by and unnerves Skelly: “Mine victim.… The camp is full of them. If you think gun smuggling is big, you should see the black market in artificial legs” (207). Thus, rather than the novel painting a two-dimensional picture of a valiant Westerner confronting baffling primitive barbarity and bringing it under the sway of reason through narrative, the presence of Najeeb as a key focalizer takes us into this world of pride, feudal power, and shifting allegiances, giving us a more authoritative and historically resonant picture of the life-world behind the turmoil. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 348

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to how Changez in The Reluctant Fundamentalist functions as corrective narrator of America for the reader.
• SEED: The ‘translator as corrective focalizer’ device is a transferable tool for reading contesting-vs-reinforcing Islamophobia in Hamid and Naqvi.