Bombs and Bomb Makers: Realism, The Association of Small Bombs, and the Post-9/11 Novel

The essay argues that The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan is ultimately a realist novel in which the central protagonist is a bomb. Adapting and adopting Lukács's theories of realism and totality, the essay provides a close and deep reading of the form of the novel. It shows how the novel eschews the characteristic features of the post-9/11 anglophone global novel by turning away from the epochal event and the US to portray the landscape of northern India, the lives of peripatetic "terrorists" fighting for an independent Kashmir, and the unraveling of the lives of those caught in the aftermath of a small bomb explosion in Delhi in 1996.