The Post-9/11 Novel as a Political and Literary Trauma

Scientific Essay from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, Comenius University in Bratislava, language: English, abstract: It has now been fifteen years since America and the world were hit by a terror attack of a new and unknown quality. The Muslim terrorists belonging to Bin Laden's terror network Al- Qaida who hijacked several planes to use them as lethal weapons against America and her symbolic role as the country of freedom and democracy started a new era of political, social and religious uproar and chaos inexperienced so far. This chaos expressed itself not only in the Gulf Wars that were to follow or the ongoing wars in Lybia, Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan and the migration waves to Europe as a result from all this it also paved the way for a literary embodiment of 9/11 as a literary element which has found a fixed place within migrant writing in the widest sense and Muslim writing in particular. The fact that writers from East (and West) incorporated this key date into their novels threw light on the fact that 9/11 did not only function as a global, national, collective, religious or individual trauma it also showed its widespread application for plot, character, constellations, speech and reception of many authors. The introduction and employment of 9/11 into contemporary literature slowly but steadily showed its ongoing importance for contemporary writing. In 2007 the newspaper USA Today declared on a headline that 'Novels about 9/11 can't stack up to non -fiction' thus throwing light at the multiple use of it as a narrative element. In 2015 an editor for The New York Times Book Review suited that the necessity for a 9/11 novel goes on because it reflects 'a new age of terror'. The fact that 9/11 is a widely used element of Muslim writing shows that it is this group of contemporary novelists who are aware of its manifold use for literature. Literature is, however, always a reflection of social, political and religious conditions and it is exactly this link which is of special interest here. The author of this text therefore first of all gives a general introduction into 9/11 before he tries to reflect in with Muslim writing and the post-9/11 novel thus throwing light on the close link between both sides and the literary conequences resulting from this. This will be done with the help of Mohsin Hamid's novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) which has by now been accepted as a masterpiece of this new genre.