A Post-colonial Reading of the Novel of  The Island of Wandering'

Postcolonial analysis, as one of the important branches of literary criticism, is concerned with the political, social, and cultural aspects of literary works. This critical approach is used to analyze those literary works narrated from colonial, dominated communities and their different issues whether comparatively or separately. The main goal of this critical approach is to provide a deconstructive approach for representing self and other or center and margin in analysis. This paper aimed at reviewing the basic tenets of post-colonialism such as the other making, gender, language, decolonization, etc, and providing a post-colonial reading of Simin Daneshvar’s novel of ‘The Island of Wandering.’ More specifically, the study is an analysis of issues like decentralizing and raising awareness against the single-sided western viewpoints which are highly reflected in Persian literary works. In so doing, the reflected themes of the novel are presented into the two main categories of 1) alienation which includes promiscuity, chaos and death thinking and, 2) Attachment to signs and beliefs of national identity. These two major themes are used to analyze the author’s views about and her reaction to the western culture. The results of the study showed that the author not only analyze prevalent issues such as identity, culture, and alienation, but also presents the cultural and intellectual levels of different social classes and their degrees of awareness as determinant factors affecting the general reaction to the western culture.