Salman Rushdie's Short Story Cycle East West

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 10 University of Stuttgart (Institut für Literaturwissenschaft - Neuere Englische Literatur) course: Literary Studies: Late Imperial to Postcolonial Literature language: English abstract: Considering the title of Rushdie's short story cycle East West one question quickly evolves in the recipient's mind: Does the comma in the title stand for a separator keeping apart two cultural blocks namely an Eastern and a Western world or can it also be considered as a linking bridge? However when reading Rushdie's colourful stories it becomes clear that he even goes far beyond this bridge notion. The author doesn't only try to link or reconcile the two parts but he as a migrant between the two worlds ironically plays with the traditional images of Orient and Occident: By applying a huge variety of genre styles structures and techniques he finally deconstructs the traditional notions of the two entities. In doing so he undermines the reader's conventional assumptions about the East and West and makes clear that in recent times reality cannot be pressed into or described by such simple schemes any longer. When Rushdie writes that literature is of all the arts the one best suited to challenging absolutes of all kinds this is exactly what he does in East West. Nothing is sacred any longer and thus most of the stories can be considered as attempts to ironically challenge and deconstruct sanctities and weak sides of Eastern and Western culture. By this critique he makes clear that within the global village these two parts of the world are closely interrelated and cannot be considered as opposing entities. Thus Rushdie goes beyond the common debates about whether there is a divide of the world into East and West or not.However as the short stories in East West fulfil all more or less this deconstructive design on the one side and represent on th