<strong>Writing home: autobiography in Salman Rushdie and V. S. Naipaul</strong> - DOI: 10.4025/actascilangcult.v30i1.4059

Abstract

This essay looks into two different approaches to autobiography as an instrument of critical reading of literary texts. Firstly, one will examine how the typology of autofiction established by Vincent Colonna may be of use in an analysis of the way Salman Rushdie has brought his own biography into his novel Midnight’s Children in an attempt to address both his Indian-based readers and the community of diasporic Indians and postcolonial critics living overseas. Secondly, the concept of the literary self-portrait, developed by Michel Beaujour, will be employed as a reading tool in an analysis of how V. S. Naipaul’s autobiography has served the writer as a starting point in his metafictionalization of his own writing career.