Rewriting alterity : the self and the other in Leila Aboulela's the translator

Abstract EN

Often depicted as conflicting and antagonistic, the cultural encounter between the East and West comes to occupy a significant space in postcolonial literature.

Postcolonial writers allocate a considerable space for writing back to the imperial misrepresentations of the cultural Other.

However, some prominent anglophone novelists opt for a rhetoric of mediation.

The present paper aims at investigating such an encounter in Leila Aboulela's The Translator in the light of the postcolonial concepts of the self-Other's encounter as well as the interplay between alterity and identity.