About Book:

It’s about the journey of an unnamed narrator. More precisely it’s about the both imaginary and physical journey. Ghosh takes on new idea about nationalism calling it a mere “illusion”. I agree that nationalism has it’s limitations.

After the two world wars and the neo imperialism of America it’s quite a natural tendency for a postmodern writer to talk about the limitations of nationalism. But calling it illusion is not much convenient I think. After all, nationalism grows out of long history of exploitation and we all know the history of racism and colonialism. So I can't chuck away the ideas of colonialism and racism while also remembering the importance the drawbacks of nationalism. But as we are living in global village now and crossing frontiers is not much of an issue now Ghosh's The Shadow Lines is pretty optimistic in that sense.