Keywords
Abstract
This article examines how the image of the Muslim East has been reconstructed in American fiction written after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Drawing on Edward Said's concept of Orientalism and on the later notion of neo-Orientalism, it offers a comparative close reading of three novels: John Updike's Terrorist (2006), Don DeLillo's Falling Man (2007) and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). The analysis is organised around four criteria: narrative voice, the source of the character's motivation, spatial imagery and binary structure. The results show that the exotic and passive Orient of the classical tradition has been replaced by a threatening and mobile one located inside the West, that religion is used as a sufficient explanation of violence, and that the Muslim character is usually spoken for rather than speaking. Hamid's novel reverses each of these features and functions as a counter-discourse. The article concludes that neo-Orientalism is not a break with the older discourse but its adaptation to new political conditions.
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