SOURCE: Kanaganayakam, Chelva. “Going Home: Figures of Enchantment and The Triple Mirror of the Self.” In Structures of Negation: The Writings of Zulfikar Ghose, pp. 158-76. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.

In the following excerpt, Kanaganayakam examines Figures of Enchantment and The Triple Mirror of the Self in terms of Ghose's feelings of diaspora, noting that Ghose's writing at this point addresses the lack of a homeland and that his writing style reflects an attempt to recreate a “home” environment, with all its contradictory elements.

Zulfikar Ghose's ongoing preoccupation with the thematics of exile and native-alien experience, the ambiguities that underline the relation between text and reality, and the problematic status of language as a vehicle for consciousness becomes increasingly evident in his next novel, Figures of Enchantment. A moment that comes to mind is the first meeting between Popayan, the magician and at times the novelist-surrogate in...