Constructing Otherness in Salman Rushdie's Novels

In his novels, Salman Rushdie draws on the Western canon, the Eastern perspectives and popular culture, foregrounding the unreality of the real and thus emphasizing the awareness of the altered image projected by the self in the refracting mirror of the other. This game of perceptions and representations is the main focus of Isabela Merila's study on "Constructing Otherness in Salman Rushdie's Novels". Among the aspects explored that the reader may find fascinating are the following: the frequent incursions into the self of the narrative, the therapeutic re-writing of the conflict between center and margin, cultural hybridization, repression and cathartic cultural transfer, Occidentals in the Orient or the colonization of the colonizer. Isabela Merila manages to combine the voice of the academic researcher with that of an inspired storyteller providing an original re-consideration of Rushdie's novel worlds. (Professor Michaela Praisler)