UNFAVORABLE REPRESENTATION OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH IN FICTIONS

Abstract

The apparent East-West divide that was established by the Cold War's polar opposites has been
shattered by proxy battles involving nations such as Syria, Ukraine, and Israel. All this focus
on the West and its foes means that the Global South and all its voices and concerns are being
drowned out. This article argues that Aravind Adiga's and Arundhati Roy's literary works
provide a crucial counterargument to this simplistic narrative by amplifying the voices of
oppressed South Asians. For instance, The God of Small Things by Roy depicts the devastation
inflicted on marginalized people in Kerala by neocolonial development projects, which is
reminiscent of real battles. At the same time, Adiga's The White Tiger provides a scathing
examination of economic inequality and the effects of the neoliberal economic model on the
working class in India, highlighting their struggles for progress within an unjust framework.
The suppressed entities of southern cultural traditions across the world are the focus of this
research, which aims to examine and explain how the prevailing narrative of counter-narrative
has affected them. More than merely showing stories from the margins, it does more. The
capitalist and authoritarian superpowers' exploitation and oppression of the people of the
Global South may be better understood by applying Dependency theory and Post Development
theory to the works of these two authors. This research falls short in capturing the full variety
of the Global South because of its limited scope and small sample size. Even while their stories
are intriguing, they leave out important viewpoints and voices in the field.