Multi-sited novels set amid imperial violence reject simple moral equivalences about recent history.

Evidence

The novel is thus opposed to the kind of simplistic moral equivalences that run through some literary accounts of recent history. At the same time, Shamsie does share the desire to celebrate those spaces of mixing that are always vulnerable to the depredations of purists. Each section of the novel is set in a different part of the world: Japan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the United States. We witness the strain as old worlds come to an end and new configurations emerge, often in violence, as characters struggle with the desire for continuity and the need “to learn how to live in a new world. With new rules” (113). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 429

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘spaces of mixing vulnerable to purists’ framing resonates directly with The Namesake’s and Home Boy’s cosmopolitan motifs, and with Hamid’s Lahore/London/New York triangulation.