ABSTRACT
By relying on well-known theories on Transmodernity, multiculturality, and cosmopolitanism, this paper will show how Tabish Khair’s fourth novel deplores the binary thinking that pits the cultural spaces of a Western liberal state against the minority enclaves of Islamic population living within it. Although the Indian and Pakistani characters depicted in the novel apparently make the most of Western social and ideological freedoms, they are nonetheless slightly alienated and isolated by an allegedly multicultural Denmark of liberal sensibility that is still inadvertently prey to old-time prejudices. The setting is depicted as a Transmodern cosmopolitan city that apparently strives to reconcile progress with respect for cultural and religious differences, and in which displaced populations make sense of their lives across contesting cultural values and traditions. However, the spatial duality public vs. private discloses the barrier that still detaches the rich and cultivated, most of whom fail to uphold any particular set of beliefs, from the poor and uncultivated, who cling to religion as a quintessential part of their identity, and as their main means to make sense of their existence in a world to which they find it difficult to belong.
