Published Paper Details:

In this paper, the reconfigurations of landscape in Northeast Indian narratives have been explored using the specific work A Lunatic in My Head by Anjum Hasan. Eschewing traditional concept of landscape as visual setting, the paper contends that space in the novel works as a narrative agency that dominates the emotional life, identity formation, and stagnation of social life. Located in Shillong, the text does not depict an exotic or idyllic locality but rather a psychologically dense and politically marginal urban zone of inertia, decay, and unfulfilled aspirations. A spatial reading of the novel, the paper delves into how the outer physical space reflects inner disruption, alienation, and waiting that is experienced by the youth and the women characters. Placing the narrative into the context of the postcolonial spatial theory, the research points to the idea of landscape as a tool of soft social criticism, which mirrors the greater issues of marginality and regional invisibility in Indian discourse. Finally, the paper shows how landscape becomes a silent but mighty protagonist in the fiction of Hasan organizing the narrative meaning and postcolonial identity.