Exploring the Conceptualization of Time and History in Hamid’s Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist: An Intertextual Study

Interrogating the chronological and teleological notions of time, this study explores the contemporaneity and relevance of the 'past' in Mohsin Hamid's two novels, Moth Smoke (2000) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), by engaging Julia Kristeva's postulations on 'Intertextuality'. Hamid's fictions interweaving the past and present are examined by utilizing Mudrovcic's views on history to affirm the viability of the 'relational' and cyclic nature of time which is opposed to the temporal succession and linearity. Accordingly, the conceptualization of history in Hamid's novels is scrutinized in relation to the 'authentic history', in a bid to establish the significance of History in shaping the present and predicting the future, thereby, renewing the prominence of time and history in spatial, temporal and theoretical spheres in post-modern times. Claiming to be a valuable addition to the scholarship on 'Time-Studies', this research would also help in rethinking and reinterpreting Pakistani anglophone fiction via unhackneyed standpoints.