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Niagara is a work of magical realism, incorporating elements of historical and experimental fiction. The novel is inhabited by the problematic moguls and politicians who shaped American settlement, the burgeoning subculture of freight train hoppers that post their travels on the internet, and an author turned ghost who can no longer remember his past work.

Lingampally is a multigenerational family story that follows a single mother, Amulya Goli, as she navigates raising Vasanth, her self-assured, reckless son, in the Christian faith in a small village in Hyderabad, India. Absent a father figure, Vasanth struggles to know himself and embrace his manhood. In a tumultuous series of events, Amulya's past indiscretions return demanding justice, and she must sacrifice all that she loves to ensure her family's future. She secures the funds that allow Vasanth, his wife Boomika, and their sons Nikki and Hari to emigrate to Plymouth, England in the winter of 2001 to start a new life. There, in the midst of racial injustice and loneliness, the Golis must draw together as a family more than ever before.

In this thesis the subject of grief and healing are examined in three novels by the Japanese writers Hiromi Kawakami, Ruth Ozeki and Banana Yoshimoto. The method for the analysis is based on psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief theory, but in the analysis of these novels, it became clear that the grief/healing-stages for the protagonists are not expressed in the exact same manner as the non-fictional patients of Kübler-Ross’ study. The analysis shows that this is partly due to the fact that the narratives take place in Japan and that there is a clear intervention where the writers have used magical interruptions in their realistic portrayal of bereavement, to help the protagonists begin to recover. These magical interruptions, this thesis states, are the use of magical realism, especially connected to the long history of Japanese folklore and myth. As a result, this thesis presents a modified model of analysis, which also reflects how the protagonists filled with bereavement and sorrow can be helped to heal and recover by the interruption of fantastic and magical events. Through this study it has become clear that not only is the need for healing significant but the need for family, relationships and a sense of belonging are just as important. To re-connect with their lost loved ones, whomever they may be, these characters must cross through the magical interventions within the narratives and dare to reach out to the people around them, strengthened by their loss and trauma, rather than fearing relationships with others due to previous trauma and grief.

O presente trabalho visa explorar a forma do romance na periferia do capitalismo no século XX e XXI, tendo como paradigmas dois de seus mais destacados escritores, Alejo Carpentier e Mia Couto. Para tanto, analisa-se aqui as obras Los Pasos Perdidos (Carpentier) e O Outro Pé da Sereia (Couto) à luz da teoria do realismo de György Lukács. O que se deseja demonstrar é: visto que o romance é a epopéia do mundo burguês, autores como Carpentier se valeram do período de desenvolvimentismo industrial no continente latino-americano inserido no crescimento mundial do capitalismo pós-Segunda Guerra (1945-1975) para lançar o conflito entre a afirmação definitiva da modernidade e seu universo pré-moderno: a isto muitos deram o nome de realismo maravilhoso. Por sua vez, em Moçambique, o histórico colonial e a independência tardia na época da crise estrutural do capital (a partir de 1975) determinaram uma frágil afirmação dos padrões sociais burgueses. Tal condição tem conseqüências na produção romanesca de autores como Mia Couto. Entre elas: o maravilhoso aparece como princípio formal, elidindo tensões necessárias ao romance e restringindo assim o alcance de sua ficção. / The present work aims to explore the form of the novel in capitalisms periphery in the XX and XXI centuries, using as paradigms two of its most illustrious writers, Alejo Carpentier and Mia Couto. To do so, Los Pasos Perdidos (Carpentier) and O Outro Pé da Sereia (Couto) are studied from the perspective of György Lukácss realism theory. The intent is to demonstrate the following: since the novel is the bourgeois worlds epopee, authors such as Carpentier made use of the industrial development period in Latin America in the context of post-Second World War capitalisms growth in the world (1945-1975) to draw the conflict between modernitys definitive affirmation and its pre-modern universe: which many have named magical realism. In turn, in Mozambique, the colonial past and the late independence by the time of capitalisms structural crisis (starting in 1975) have defined a fragile affirmation of bourgeois social patterns. Such situation has consequences in the novel production of authors such as Mia Couto. Amongst which: the magical element appears as formal principle, suppressing necessary tensions to the novel, thus restricting its fictional reach.

No romance The Famished Road (1991), o autor nigeriano Ben Okri dá uma nova dimensão à figura da criança-espírito ou abiku, que é um motivo recorrente entre os iorubás e em diversas outras culturas da África ocidental. Como um fenômeno da crença dessas culturas, o abiku é um tema característico da narrativa oral africana, tendo sido usado também em várias obras da literatura africana de língua inglesa. Okri realiza, contudo, uma inovação ao transformar o abiku no narrador de seu romance. Uma vez que essa criatura é um in between, vivendo permanentemente na intersecção entre o mundo dos vivos e o dos mortos, a estrutura da obra literária é alterada pela realidade vista pelos seus olhos. A sua visão é composta pelas imagens da simultaneidade entre esses mundos. Na construção de seu romance, Okri tenta traduzir essa visão para um público leitor ocidental, utilizando ao mesmo tempo paradigmas da oralidade africana e da literatura ocidental. O romance se coloca, assim, num espaço de transição entre a cultura africana e a ocidental. São utilizados métodos e estratégias narrativas de ambas as tradições e o próprio fenômeno do abiku é investido por outras concepções mais ocidentais a respeito da ressurreição da alma. O objetivo desta dissertação é mostrar, de acordo com uma perspectiva crítica pós-colonial, como esse romance se constrói como uma obra híbrida entre os modos de se perceber e de se retratar a realidade característicos de cada uma dessas culturas. / In the novel The Famished Road (1991) Nigerian author Ben Okri gives a new dimension to the spirit child or abiku\'s image, which is a recurrent motif among the Yoruba and many other cultures from West Africa. The abiku is a characteristic subject of the African oral narrative and is also present in some African literature in English as the abiku is part of the belief of those cultures. However, Okri undertakes an innovation, turning the abiku into the narrator of his novel. Since this creature is an in between, living permanently in the intersection between the world of the living and the world of the dead, the structure of the literary work is altered by the reality as it is seen through his eyes. His vision is made up by the simultaneous images of those two worlds. In the construction of his novel, Okri tries to translate this vision to a Western reading audience, using paradigms from both the African orality and Western literature. Thus, the novel is placed in a transitional space between African and Western cultures. Narrative methods and strategies from both traditions are used and the abiku phenomenon itself is invested by other more Western conceptions about the soul\'s resurrection. This dissertation aims to reveal from a postcolonial theoretical perspective how this novel is constructed as a hybrid work between the modes of perceiving and depicting reality characteristic of each one of these cultures.

This thesis examines how Latin America is produced and consumed through the ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival in Manchester and how people who do not have Latin American origins (subsequently 'non-Latin American') use Latin American culture to reconcile issues of self-identity and cosmopolitanism at a local level. Extending Dina Iordanova's (2010) application of imagined communities to film festivals beyond diaspora, a framework of imagined cosmopolitan communities finds that, through consumption of the ¡Viva! film festival, non-Latin American consumers can often feel a sense of belonging or connection to Latin American people and culture. Non-Latin American ¡Viva! consumers subsequently incorporate Latin American culture and identity within their own construction of self-identity in order to reaffirm their sense of self. Using a mixed methods approach which brings together qualitative research (including a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews) with media analysis, this thesis finds that the incorporation of Latin American identity into non-Latin American self-identity is facilitated, in part, by the way in which Latin America has been encoded at a discursive level in the UK in recent decades through magical realism and associated codes, themes and narratives concerning the region's bizarre, crazy, strange and surreal characteristics. Applying theories of encoding and decoding (Hall, 1980), the ¡Viva! film festival and its non-Latin American audience members are found to likewise construct Latin America in these terms, as different, but not too different from British cultural norms. This interpretive framework, along with the fact that Latin Americans are largely positioned outside of the increasingly hostile rhetoric towards migrants and ethnic minorities in the UK, facilitates the incorporation of a Latin American identity within non-Latin American consumers' construction of self-identity. Scholars have suggested that cosmopolitanism demands a transformation in self-understanding in addition to an openness towards the cultural Other (Delanty, 2009). Analysis of the ¡Viva! film festival subsequently reveals a nuanced form of cosmopolitanism in which the Self is transformed through the incorporation of the Latin American cultural Other and offers an insight into the changing nature of the cultural relationship between Latin America and the UK. Latin America has typically been constructed as embodying the unconscious fears and desires of British (and western) culture (Beasley-Murray, 2003; Foster, 2009). This thesis finds instead that Latin America is being reconfigured by non-Latin American consumers of the ¡Viva! film festival as an equally formative part of their conscious identity that completes their sense of self and of being cosmopolitan in an attempt to resist and challenge contemporary scepticism and rhetoric in the UK surrounding multiculturalism, immigration and ethnic minorities.