Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Arts - Department of English

This study is concerned with the representation of space in the selected novels of three diasporic writers: Anita Rau Badami, Andrea Levy and Hisham Matar and how this representation is affected by their unique diasporic experience. These writers live and write away from their homeland and portray different diasporic experiences through immigration or exile in their fiction. Each writer comes from a different homeland, lives in a different host country and belongs to a different generation of immigrants. However, the three of them are preoccupied, in their novels, with issues related to space. The study will analyze, compare and contrast the representation of different types of space in Levy{u2019}s novels, Fruit of the Lemon (1999) and Small Island (2004), Badami{u2019}s novels, The Hero{u2019}s Walk (2001) and Tell It to the Trees (2011) as well as Matar{u2019}s two novels, In the Country of Men (2006) and Anatomy of a Disappearance (2011), by applying Henri Lefebvre{u2019}s concept of the production of 2social space3 and 2natural space3 and how it is deeply affected by political, socio economic and cultural conditions, focusing mainly on the city and the natural space surrounding it. It will also examine postcolonial space and how issues of race and identity, together with other social, political and economic factors in post-empire England affect hegemony over space, particularly in an urban context, whether in London (England) or in Kingston (Jamaica). The study will also examine the representation of 2home3 according to Gaston Bachelard{u2019}s concept of inner space as well as its relation to women and children in the selected novels

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