Pričaj mi / Tell Me

Egzilantska i postkolonijalna priča u romanu Engleski pacijent Majkla Ondačija / A Story of Exile and Postcolonialism in Michael Ondaatje’s Novel The English Patient

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the story of exile and postcolonialism pertaining to one of the characters in Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient – a Hungarian who goes by the name of Count Ladislaus de Almásy. Both Almásy’s storytelling and his book, Herodotus’ Histories, represent his attempts to demystify the past which he cannot, either ontologically or epistemologically speaking, grasp. The only way of “grasping” it is by means of storytelling. Accordingly, the novel is to be analyzed as belonging to the genre of historiographic metafiction, that is, within the context of its metanarrative/metafictional literary devices which serve as a means of constructing the past. Although his solace at first, storytelling eventually becomes a prison of Almásy’s own making as it leaves him both displaced and estranged. He, however, is also cut off from the rest of the novel’s world by being the only character to explicitly defy the boundaries of dominant cultures. As someone who belongs “nowhere”, Almásy is the true embodiment of a postcolonial discourse and a culturally heterogeneous identity.