Incidence of Globalization in Salman Rushdie’s East, West and Shalimar the Clown

Literature in general tends to be a reflection of its time. In the current scenario of the world where advancement in commerce and technology have blurred boundaries between peoples, cultures and nations, literature has largely become representative of the same. An expatriate writer like Salman Rushdie has adequate raw material in his hands to mould works that deal with the intersection of cultures and races; further, he is able to encapsulate the migrant experience through his personal knowledge and observation in a society to which he does not originally belong. In works like East, West and Shalimar the Clown, elements of globalization come through heavily. Encounters and relations that would not have been otherwise possible without the interconnectedness of our present world are seen in the works mentioned. Rushdie engages both the worlds of the East and the West, giving a fair picture of world affairs and social circumstances in the process. The increasing materialism of the postmodern world, cross-cultural relationships, and the glocalization of language, are just some of the issues he project in his works.