Fragments of Suffering, Threads of Survival: A Comparative Study of Han Kang and Bapsi Sidhwa

This paper provides a comparative analysis of how Han Kang and Bapsi Sidhwa, two wellknown Asian female writers, approach the depiction of trauma and literary experimentation, as reflected in the representation of gendered violence and mass suffering in a broken literary form.Based on trauma theory and feminist literary criticism, the study discusses the place of selected novels, The Vegetarian (2007) by Han Kang, and Cracking India (1991) by Bapsi Sidhwa, through the lens of narrative and stylistic disruption, non-sequential chronology and stylistic fragmentation that is reflective of psychological displacement of trauma, and postcolonial rupture.These two writers depict, respectively, the personal and social consequences of the historic violence endured by the Korean state and the Partition of Indiathrough the prism of the silenced, injured, and subaltern feminine body.In a close reading of their narrative techniques, the paper will argue that fragmentation becomes an aesthetic and even ethical response to unspeakable and inadmissible violence, providing space for healing, resistance, and remembrance in literature.With their stories of fragmented narrative forms threaded with overtones of survival, Han Kang and Bapsi Sidhwa recapture literature itself in a new articulation of witnessing and recovering.This comparative study contributes to a broader understanding of Asian women's literature as an arena of political critique and emotional recovery, underscoring the need to gain awareness of diverse histories of victimization and resistance beyond cultural and national borders.