ABSTRACT

This chapter explains Nadeem Aslam's novel allows for the critical tracing of the two processes by highlighting the affective appeals the American spy fictions also issue, as well as the revelatory dynamics they put into play. The spy's personal brokenness is one of the key features that stretches across these Pakistani and American post-9/11 espionage fictions and that invites the reader to view the spy as more 'human'. The invitation extends a dynamic Jeanne F. Bedell observes in much post-World War II spy fiction, wherein 'tired men with domestic problems and chronic indigestion have replaced the indestructible heroes of the past'. The appropriation of espionage fiction's conventions, especially those used to represent the American spy, by Nadeem Aslam's 2008 The Wasted Vigil draws attention to how the American fictions use these same conventions. A child of the Cold War, David Town lived his childhood in an America where 'a hatred and fear of Communism was in the air'.