As allusive yet broadly realist writers, even with their international, intercultural influences, Aslam and Shamsie seem to stand within this tradition. The ubiquity of the liberal view is reflected in the fact that, in the end, Aslam's attempts to render the inner life of an Islamist militant hardly differ, in their awkward lacunae, from Updike's labored, hamstrung efforts. Shamsie's characters are more nuanced, but the narrative arc on which they are perched still describes a battle between models of cosmopolitanism and nationalism.

XREF: Connects to the broader critical debate about whether postcolonial writing can escape Western liberal narrative conventions, echoing arguments from criticism on cosmopolitanism and literary form. QUESTION: What would a genuinely non-liberal rendering of an Islamist militant's inner life look like in fiction? This invites further thinking about alternatives to the cosmopolitan/nationalist binary.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 438