Identity in Georgian and Turkish Postmodernist Novels: Aka Morchiladze’s Your Adventure and Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul

Abstract

The pursuit of identity is one of the defining concerns of postmodern novels. Identity is constructed through the internalization and acceptance of social consciousness, aesthetic preferences, habitual practices, norms, and value systems. Identification with a specific cultural sphere provides coherence and intelligibility to individual existence. Globalization, encompassing countries with diverse cultural systems and different levels of development, stimulates intercultural interaction while simultaneously producing identity-related challenges. Within the cultural domain, globalization exhibits a strong tendency toward the unification of local formations, through the dissemination of common values, norms, and ideals. This process may generate plural identities, wherein local cultural forms are partially incorporated into a global framework. In postmodern literature, unlike modernist texts — where protagonists search for and ultimately discover their roots, thereby resolving their journey of self-discovery — identity remains indeterminate, ambiguous, and non-homogeneous, as space and environment continuously reshape and reconstruct it; thus, the search becomes an ongoing process, and who we truly are depends on the perspective from which we view the world and unfolding events.
The present study aims to demonstrate how the issue of identity is articulated in Georgian and Turkish postmodern novels, which problems are highlighted, and how authors from different cultural settings propose to address them. The analysis is based on Aka Morchiladze’s Your Adventure and Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul. These postmodern literary works may be regarded as powerful reflections of identity-related complexities, proposing distinct ways toward their resolution.