Shared graves: Empire and trauma in Nadeem Aslam’s The Wasted Vigil

ABSTRACT

British Pakistani author Nadeem Aslam published his third novel, The Wasted Vigil, in 2008. Set in post-9/11, this novel traces Afghanistan’s turbulent past as a nation caught in the crosshairs of conflicts between global powers. Read as “world literature”, The Wasted Vigil maps the connection between violence wrought by an emergent American hegemony in Afghanistan during the Cold War and the resultant emergence of extremist groups, leading to the post-9/11 invasion. This article frames The Wasted Vigil within current debates in the field of trauma studies that problematize the Euro-American-centric approach to trauma emerging from non-western conflict zones. It argues that through the representation of a recalcitrant and omnipresent cultural trauma that is unaccounted for by contemporary media frames and embodied in this novel by both the physical landscape and Afghan characters of various backgrounds, Aslam succeeds in highlighting the impact of the US presence in Afghanistan during the Cold War.

KEYWORDS:

• Afghanistan
• Cold War
• cultural trauma
• Nadeem Aslam
• The Wasted Vigil
• US hegemony

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Notes on contributors

Sarah O’ Brien

Sarah O’ Brien is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Maynooth University, where she works within the field of world literature with a focus on post-9/11 fiction. Sarah’s work engages with fields of theoretical enquiry such as memory studies, trauma theory and media studies.