INTRODUCTION Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines is a landmark novel of Indian English literature. It blends personal memory with major historical events to offer a deep meditation on identity, belonging, and the illusion of borders. Published in 1988, the novel won the Sahitya Akademi Award. It follows the narrator’s fragmented recollections, connecting two extended families—one in Calcutta, the other in London—through decades marked by the Swadeshi movement, World War II, Partition, and communal riots in Dhaka and Calcutta. Through this...