Chambers, Claire Gail orcid.org/0000-0001-8996-4129 (2025) Breaking Down Walls in Post-Pandemic Transnational Fables:Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man. University of Toronto Quarterly. pp. 695-723. ISSN 0042-0247
Abstract
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man are fables that indirectly engage with the COVID-19 pandemic. While neither novel explicitly mentions the pandemic, they offer subtle reflections on this period in our history and forecast COVID’s fallout. Ishiguro uses a childlike lens to explore a dystopian world involving artificial intelligence and gene editing. Hamid elliptically addresses the pandemic in the context of a resurgence of racism and the resilient response from Black Lives Matter activists over the past half-decade. I examine the two authors’ oblique representations of the pandemic and the way in which it triggers reflections on those partitions and fences put up to divide us. The pandemic’s inherently challenging nature for direct representation is echoed in these writers’ decision to create fables not tied to any particular country. While Ishiguro’s and Hamid’s novels evoke ideas about disease, death, and bereavement, they primarily focus on loneliness, digital dependency, and the social divisions that have arisen, especially since 2016 due to events such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Readers look through Ishiguro’s titular cyborg character Klara’s eyes as she tries to make sense of the boxes, rectangles, partitions, and walls that she sees. And Hamid uses absurdism to explore racial classification, whereby characters lose their whiteness and cross over to an unspecified ethnicity for the rest of their lives. These authors’ transnational narratives encourage breaking down the metaphorical and physical barriers that have divided people. Through their fable-like storytelling, the novelists strive to connect people and blur the lines that separate us.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the University’s Research Publications and Open Access policy. |
Keywords: | COVID-19 pandemic,Kazuo Ishiguro,Mohsin Hamid,transnational fable,border theory |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > English and Related Literature (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 14 Nov 2024 00:39 |
Last Modified: | 24 Feb 2025 00:08 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.3138/utq.93.04.08 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3138/utq.93.04.08 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219656 |
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Description: UTQ - Author Accepted Manuscript - Claire Chambers 'Breaking Down Walls in Kazuo Ishiguro and Mohsin Hamid'
Licence: CC-BY 2.5