AFTER THE COLONIAL

Abstract

The paper deals with possible interpretations of the novel Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya from the viewpoint of postcolonial studies. The immanent analysis of her work leads to the conclusion about a seriously founded and premeditated author's attitude which implies and marks the basic coordinates of postcolonial space of existence which the author then confronts with her own poetics. Filtered through regional studies, the novel Nectar in a Sieve reacts to the ultimately complex and developed theoretical apparatus of the classic authors of postcolonial thought (Fanon, Bhabha, Said) and allows us to recognize within it all the important theses which preoccupied and inspired the above-mentioned authors. By problematising the postcolonial state, Markandaya, throughout her highly aesthetic prose, answers the essential suppositions of a coherent and designed theory.