(Re)visiting the past: Wounded history and traumatized memory in Qurratulain Hyder’s sita betrayed and fireflies in the mist

Abstract

ABSTRACT Qurratulain Hyder is a major stalwart of the new generation of Urdu fiction writers. In her book Naya Afsana, she discusses psychologized realism wherein the past gives way to the present. She also depicts how a human being becomes a representation of the collective past via writings of his/her community's collective past. Blurring every possible binary of past/present, home/world, private/public, Hyder’s neo-historical writings not only expose the limitation of her fictional world but also give it a new dimension, unlike contemporary writers who choose to focus on the external realities of the existential crisis of humanity during the early part of the twentieth century. She shows her skill by uncovering the internal realities of human experience. While giving her narratives a historical grounding, she has also made a sensorial reading of the holocaust in her narratives by focusing on the psychological interiors of affected human beings. This paper seeks to study two such fictional expositions of Hyder’s oeuvre—Sita Betrayed and Fireflies in the Mist—in order to understand how these two works help to explore the issues of trauma and memory in the context of the wounded history of partition.