Postcolonial study in Radwa Ashour’s A Part of Europe

Postcolonialism, as an approach, examines literary texts from different perspectives some of which are more frequent in academic centers like hegemony, center-periphery, subaltern voice and Orientalism. The components that underpin this approach are considerably divers and dynamic, one of which is palimpsest that can be defines as writing over/on previous writings. Colonizers impose their culture, literature, and language over those of the colonized territories, yet are not able to erase them altogether. Indeed, precolonial cultural products underpin the colonial cultural products. The postcolonial culture of colonized countries is like a container that contains the works of the former natives in addition to the colonial writings. The aim of postcolonial writings, therefore, can be shedding light on these underpinning layers as the cultural identity of indigenous people.  This study draws on recent postcolonial approaches, particularly that of Bill Ashcroft, to discover the vanished Egyptian cultural underpinnings in A Part of Europe written by Radwa Ashour. The study of palimpsest, an infrequent concept in postcolonial studies paves the way for new critical readings of the novel. It finds that the novel’s narrator by addressing the economic, literary and media palimpsests of the colonial discourse that have undermined those of the natives, attempts to reflect native values and warn readers of the colonial discourse hidden in it.