A REPRESENTATION OF DOUBLE DIASPORA: A TRANSNATIONAL READING OF IDENTITY FORMATION IN KHALED HOSSEINI’S AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED

Abstract

The article examines the politics of double-diaspora and its implications for Afghan identity in Khaled Hosseini's And the Mountains Echoed in a transnational and postcolonial context. The study is based on Avtar Brah's “diaspora space” to show how diasporic space is produced through multiple and layered displacements and transmitted across generations in Afghanistan. It concentrates on the novel's broken narrative form and the weaving together of many voices through time. It also claims that these aspects act as showings of trauma passing down, memory plus cultural separation, placing Hosseini's characters inside a changing action of moving, banishment and mixed identity creation where being part is not firm but changed in places taken from their land. Through transnational and postcolonial diaspora theories within the study, the study shows how the novel challenges fixed ideas of homeland and belonging, whilst articulating the complexities of the double diaspora condition. This paper adds to scholarship about diasporic identity and transnational practices and highlights the novel's importance for representing the contemporary Afghan diaspora.