The Poetics of Unreliable Remembrance: Trauma and Narrative Reconstruction in Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans

Mrs. P. Mary Dhana Packiya Rani 

Reg. No. 23211194012006, Full time Ph.D. Research Scholar, 

Research Department of English, Sadakathullah Appa College, Rahmath Nagar, Tirunelveli – 627011. 

(Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Abishekapatti, Tirunelveli- 627012).

Email: marydpr89@gmail.com

Dr. K. Hema

Assistant Professor and Research Supervisor, 

Research Department of English, Sadakathullah Appa College, Rahmath Nagar, Tirunelveli – 627011. 

(Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Abishekapatti, Tirunelveli – 627012.) India.

(Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Abishekapatti, Tirunelveli- 627012).

Email: hemaselvan11@gmail.com

Abstract
The discipline of memory studies, which arose at the turn of the century, provided academics with an alternative perspective on the way the past and its telling should be interpreted. Kazuo Ishiguro, a modern author and the winner of the Nobel Prize and the Booker Prize for his literary work, writes his novels with a focus on memory, trauma, and personal identity. The purpose of this paper is to discuss Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel When We Were Orphans (2000) as an investigation of the fallacy of autobiographical memory and to evaluate the process by which the novel’s main character tries to restore his personal identity through narrative reconstruction.

Keywords: Identity, Memory, Trauma, Narrative, Colonialism.