Stereotyping in the Works of Indian English Authors: Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Kiran Desai

Based on stereotyping the Other, both Orientalism and Occidentalism focus on representations of the West and the East, the Self and the Other, and their binary oppositions. These stereotyped images are especially present in postcolonial literature, including the works by Indian English authors. The dichotomy between the Orient and the Occident can, naturally, be best expressed by writers who are of hybrid origin, such as Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Anita Desai and Kiran Desai. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the instances of Orientalist and Occidentalist discourse in some of their works, in which even the protagonists are hybrid people, belonging at the same time to both of these two worlds, to the East and to the West.