Cilt:64 Sayı:01 (2024)

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Intersections Of Autobiography, Fiction, And Postmodernism In Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans
(Ankara Üniversitesi, 2023) Düzgün, Şebnem
Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans (2000) can be read as a postmodern ctional autobiography, in which Christopher Banks, a ctional detective, uses autobiographical writing to relieve himself from his childhood traumas caused by the mysterious disappearance of his parents. Christopher reects on past events from his mature perspective and lls in the gaps in his childhood memories by using his imagination to cope with his traumatic past. However, the narrator is unable to make a complete assessment of past events from his current perspective because of the temporal distance between the past and the present. Challenging the notions of metanarrative and linear temporality, he reimagines and reconstructs the past to create his own truths about his life. On the other hand, Christopher's ctional autobiographical writing serves as a means for self-discovery, which compels him to confront his traumatic past rather than hide it behind the facade of a successful and renowned detective. Referring to the arguments on postmodernism and autobiographical writing, this article examines When We Were Orphans as a postmodern ctional autobiography to show that the narrator reconstructs and reshapes his story in order to create a coherent and cohesive personal reality and mitigate his childhood traumas