Postmodern Narrative Techniques in the Novels of ShashiThroor

Abstract

The modern novelist uses Pastiche as a tool to explore or explicate the idea with ‘known to unknown’ method. Here Shashi Tharoor in his The Great Indian Novel explicates the current political scenario with the Epic Spoof. Inhis second novel Show Business, he illustrated nuances of modern government with Bollywood film industry. In his third novel Riot,Tharoorpicturises communal unrest of India with his fictional story. Postmodernism's love of inter-textuality and meta-fiction adds to its maximalist character. It's inevitable if you think about it: if an author is making loads of references to other texts—and to itself as a text—then we're most likely dealing with a work of maximalist fiction. In fact, maximalism is pretty blatant about including heaps of outside info and references.Tharoor's multiple focalization of communalism, in a pluralistic, secular nation from the perspectives of civic and police authorities including that of a foreign correspondent serve to intensify the opacity of secularism.