Hanwell to Hell: A Study of Zadie Smith's Perspectives on Postmodernism

Abstract

This paper undertakes a comprehensive study of Zadie Smith’s Hanwell in Hell within the broader context of her literary work, situating it against the backdrop of postmodernist literary traditions. The study aims to investigate Smith’s negotiation with postmodern strategies such as fragmentation, metafiction and irony, while highlighting how she adapts these devices to address diasporic identity, cultural hybridity and existential concerns. The paper seeks to analyze the textual and thematic implications of postmodernism in her works and  assess how her narratives move beyond relativism to articulate ethical, cultural  and diasporic dimensions of identity. Through qualitative close reading, discourse analysis and intertextual mapping, the research interprets the paradigmatic shift in her fiction. The novel portrays Hanwell as he confronts memory, mortality and alienation, dramatizing postmodern fragmentation while retaining a deeply human center. The implied theory includes Hutcheon’s historiographic metafiction and Baudrillard’s simulacra, supplemented by postcolonial and metamodern readings. The research findings suggest that her fiction reflects a hybridized postmodernism and employs postmodern strategies as tools to interrogate diaspora, memory and cultural displacement.