An Ethnoscapic Reading of Khalid Hosseini’s The Kite Runner

Abstract

For the last two decades, the novel The Kite Runner (2003) had become an active site for facilitating discussions on religion, gender and identity in the third world countries. The work gained prominence as several accolades poured in from various parts of the globe for being one of the pioneering works to subtly trace the evolution of the Taliban and other political administrations that battered the lives of the individuals. Studies on themes of culture, identity, relationship, betrayal have been extensively carried out by researchers but not much work has been done in the realm of conceptualising the nation state and identity. Therefore, this research paper intends to focus on the construct of nation-state and its various manifestations or realisations. In this, connection, this paper uses the theoretical framework of Arjun Appadurai to look into the formations of ethnoscapes in Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. The paper will also use ideas of culture and nation proposed by Homi. K. Bhabha to study the means by which identity(ies) gets perpetuated.