A Re-orientalist Approach to Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

Abstract

The objective of this study is to draw upon the Orients’ skewed representation perpetuated and disseminated by Khaled Hosseini in his Anglophone fiction The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns under the framework of Re-orientalism. Re-orientalism extends itself as a concept where the Oriental author propagates a literature mystifying the East as barbaric and uncivilized and in turn validating the hypothesis to suppress and rule the Orient. This study adopts a Qualitative approach by applying the technique of close reading with Re-orientalism as the theoretical framework. The findings of this study show the Orient in a monolithic and essentialized manner where they are exoticized, caricatured and concocted as antithesis of the enlightened West in the selected works.