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66

E

UR

A

MERICA

Here, Harrison makes two points. One is about the border

between the city and the suburb, and the other is about the

author’s marketing strategy in using “Londonstani” as the book

title. In response to such criticism as Harrison’s, Malkani maintains

that “I would never have thought that I was writing a book that

could be called Hounslowstani” (Graham, 2008a). He further

explains that it is more broadly the London metropolis, rather than

the narrow and local area of Hounslow, with which his novel is

concerned. To make such a comment is, however, not to conform

with Harrison’s and several other critics’ arbitrary dichotomy

between the urban and the suburban, but to point out the fact that

“London is just made up of loads of different suburbs” (2008a).

For Malkani, “[t]he tourist guide London, the Leicester Square,

Westminster, Piccadilly kind of area

that really is for tourists”

(2008a). Set in an enclave in Hounslow,

Londonstani

is illustrative

of Malkani’s point that “[r]eal Londoners are not really in Zone 1”

(2008a).

Another controversy about the title is that, in the aftermath of

the terrorist attacks on July 7, 2005, many people have assumed

that the title “Londonstani” refers to the debate about the city’s

radicalized Muslims, as reflected in Phillips’

Londonistan

. Actually

the word “Londonstani” has been used long before it was applied

to radicalized Muslims and has had a more positive meaning.

When it was used in the 1990s by some South Asian British youths

as a desi slang for “Londoners,” “Londonstani” was a self-

referential term which was meant to be “a celebration of London’s

multiculturalism rather than a criticism of it” (Malkani, 2009). As

represented in

Londonstani

, the diversity of identities and the

intercultural interaction between different communities across the

border of nation state and ethnicity demonstrate that what is

failing in contemporary London and Britain are the multicultural

policies based purely on ethnicity identity politics, rather than the

multicultural reality that people from different backgrounds live

together.