Theme of Identity and Displacement in Tomb of Sand
Keywords:
Tomb of Sand, Geetanjali Shree, identity, displacement, Partition literature, feminist narrativeAbstract
Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (translated by Daisy Rockwell), winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize, stands as a powerful postmodern literary exploration of identity, memory, and displacement. Centred around an 80-year-old woman who defies expectations of widowhood, passivity, and silence, the novel unravels the many layers of the self—social, gendered, national, and spiritual—through a journey that crosses not only geographic borders but also emotional and cultural ones. This paper investigates how Tomb of Sand intricately weaves the themes of identity and displacement using a narrative structure that resists linearity and embraces fragmentation.
By returning to Pakistan decades after surviving Partition, the protagonist disrupts patriarchal and nationalist narratives that have long marginalised female voices. Her physical displacement becomes a metaphorical act of resistance, through which she reclaims silenced histories and redefines her identity outside rigid societal roles. Moreover, her bond with characters such as Rosie, a transgender artist, challenges binary constructs of gender and reinforces the novel’s emphasis on identity as fluid, relational, and self-fashioned.
The analysis draws on postcolonial and feminist literary theory, especially the works of Homi Bhabha and Judith Butler, to understand how displacement becomes a transformative experience rather than a purely traumatic one. The article further explores how the act of storytelling—across generations, languages, and perspectives—functions as a mode of survival and reconstruction in the aftermath of cultural rupture. Tomb of Sand, thus, not only revises how we perceive the Partition but also foregrounds how deeply displacement is embedded in the making and remaking of identity.
Through its defiant protagonist and radical narrative style, Tomb of Sand blurs boundaries between nations, genders, and selves, offering a compelling reflection on belonging and becoming in the contemporary South Asian context.
