Comment on the expatriate experience in contemporary novels.

This is a fairly powerful question.  I think that recent
technological advances and the increasingly globalized nature of the world setting has
to play into this topic.  As the world becomes easier with which to network and
communicate, I think that one's cultural identity with one's nation is becoming less
important.  This does not mean that borders are disappearing or completely becoming
void.  Rather, it means that individual's strict sense of self as being defined by
national identity is becoming interspersed with other conceptions.  For example,
Pasternak is considered "Russian."  In the modern setting, globalization is making the
exchange of ideas and notions something that is more seamless, so that the national
identity of literature is becoming an element that is not entirely guaranteed.  I think
that a writer like Salman Rushdie could be part of this dialogue.  Here is a writer who
was born in India at the time of Partition, studies in England, and then though his work
is exiled from both homes.  He ends up journeying to different parts of the world and
this globalized reality is reflected in his writing.  One could not say that geographic
or national identity defines Rushdie.  His latest book is about life in Florentine times
during the Middle Ages.  His experience of being an expatriate has demonstrated how one
can end up choosing their own identity to be reflected in their writing.  Geography does
not have to play a definitive role in this process.