Postcolonial Hybridity in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

Abstract

Cross-cultural interactions have been an important topic in the field of postcolonial literature and theory. The work of Canadian-based writer and poet Michael Ondaatje is noted for the nuanced mapping of post-colonial hybrid cultural experience. Cultural hybridity, identity and otherness entangled together form a new entity. The work of Sri Lankan origin Ondaatje is a complex thematic link between these issues; In fact, they can be seen as central concerns in his work. The composite experience that Ondaatje writes about is inconsistent, and involves internal contradictions.The postcolonial literary themes challenges the binary understanding that the colonized people are naïve, and degraded. This paper will focus on cultural hybridity, and it certainly will point out the central themes inthe English Patient.