THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN SHYAM SELVADURAI'S FUNNY BOY: NEGOTIATING THE SPACE OF THE HOME AND THE SCHOOL.

The quest for identity in Funny Boy is crucial to the politics, both personal and political in the eponymous novel by Shyam Selvadurai. Arjie's quest for identity against the backdrop of the social and political turmoil of Sri Lanka charts the tumultuousjourney of a young boy as he confrontsfamilial and societal pressures while grappling with his homoerotic desire. Arjie is a young upper-class Tamil Sri Lankan boy whosefamily is extremely conservative and orthodox. The novel examines the way in which the personal and the political intertwine with each other and affect the lives of individuals in ways that are often detrimental to thepursuit of individual desires. What emerges as an interestingpoint is the way in which the supposedly conservative sites of identityformation i.e. the home and the school emerge as the very sites upon which non-heteronormative subjectivity gets inscribed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]