Intermedial fictions of the “new” metropolis: Calcutta, Delhi and Cairo in the graphic novels of Sarnath Banerjee and G. Willow Wilson¹

1. I would like to thank Pavan Kumar Malreddy and Cornelia Bär for their careful reading of various draft versions of this article.

Abstract

The notion of “new” metropolises alludes to the multilayered ways of life inside and outside, or even “downside”, of postcolonial cityscapes. This holds true, for example, for Calcutta, Delhi or Cairo. Unlike the normative conception of the western metropolis, three graphic novels, Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor (2004) and The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers (2007) and G. Willow Wilson’s and M.K. Perker’s Cairo (2007), produce “new” metropolises which disclose the postcolonial city’s own subversive nature of underworlds morphing into overworlds, where tradition, modernity (and postmodernity) collide in the most unrelenting and dynamic fashion. The texts under discussion exemplify the nature and scope of the “new” metropolis by virtue of their enabling synthesis between the literary and imaginary. By focusing on the strategies of palimpsest-like layering in the three novels, this essay aims to show that postcolonial cities are essentially “new” metropolises that do not lend themselves to an easy explanation or conceptual ornamentation. Instead, they bear features of dynamism and multiplex layering that the literature on urban studies and postcolonial metropolises in general, has so far failed to address.

Keywords:

• Delhi
• Calcutta
• Cairo
• “new” metropolis
• graphic novel

Notes

1. I would like to thank Pavan Kumar Malreddy and Cornelia Bär for their careful reading of various draft versions of this article.