Beyond the Void- Postcolonial Trauma and the Strategy of Silence in African and South Asian Literature

This paper examines the role of silence and absence as literary strategies in African and South Asian postcolonial fiction. Focusing on works by Chinua Achebe, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Arundhati Roy, and Bapsi Sidhwa, the study demonstrates how these narrative techniques express trauma, resist colonial discourse, and reassert indigenous epistemologies. Drawing from postcolonial, trauma, and feminist theories, the analysis positions silence not as passivity, but as an active, insurgent gesture that reclaims narrative space and complicates the politics of voice and representation.