Decolonizing the Narrative and Ethnic Identity:A Contextual analysis of the select novels of the Bosnian Literature.

Abstract (English)

Decolonizing narratives point out the complex histories and the exploitation of different ethnicities or racial identities in a way that one can easily understand the historical Recentering in narratology.It gives an ample opportunity to ethnicity in narratives. Ethnic revivals of different ethnic identities bring major changes in history, politics, society and economy in a nation. Language plays a pivotal role to assimilate sociolinguistic evaluation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Refocalization of narratives from the formalist narratology, ethnic narratology grows interest in the scientific description of ethnics. Language and ethnic identity are interconnected and together builds an identity of an individual. Each ethnic group has individual political goals, its own language, its unique religion and its unique socio-cultural backgrounds. Bosnia-Herzegovina is a multicultural land. It has a rich cultural heritage and diversity where three ethnic groups; Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats are united together in the former Yugoslavia. It has three official languages; Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian but after the 1990s, it became ‘Serbo-Croatian’ language. The disintegration of three ethnic groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the basis of language, religion and ethnic identity caused ethnic conflicts which are known as Bosnian war (1992-1995). In this present paper I would like to critically analyze Ausma Zehanat Khan’s novel The Unquiet Dead (2014) and Sara Novic`’s novel Girl At War (2015). The disintegration of ethnic groups for the language, religion, ethnic differentiation owing to passages of trauma, conflict, civil war and violence calls for scrutiny of the interplay between national and international dialects while delocalizing one’s identity as cosmopolitan.