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War Allegory in Narayan Wagle's Palpasa Café

Hardev Kaur and Abdalhadi Nimer Abu Jweid

Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science, Volume 26, Issue T, December 2018

Keywords: Allegory, metafiction, narrative structure, Nepal, paradox, self-reflexivity, Wagle

Published on: 24 Dec 2018

This article examines the metafictional representations in Narayan Wagle's Palpasa Café (2008). The novel's metafictional elements depict the state of the Nepalese people during the Civil War. Wagle critiques the devastating consequences of the Civil War and how it affected the Nepali individuals' psyche. The study elucidates Wagle's use of metafiction as an indirect commentary on the political status quo. The study also uses allegory to explicate the metafictional elements in the novel in order to highlight Wagle's fictional critique. Allegory is elaborated in terms of paradox. Paradoxical allegory reveals the implicit metafictional authorial presence in the novel's narrative structure to accentuate the author's subjective voice. Such authorial presence is conveyed via insinuating self-reflexivity device which allows the author to intervene in his narrative fabric. The study mainly focuses on the authorial metafictional interference within the fictional text through paradoxical allegory. Both allegory and paradox have an interrelation with metafiction which unravels the author's relative perspective on the tragic consequences of the Nepalese Civil War.

ISSN 1511-3701

e-ISSN 2231-8542

Article ID

JSSH-2053-2017

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