Yazbec, Olga (PhD)Tenna, Misrak2020-07-212023-12-052020-07-212023-12-052020-12http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/21928Postmodernism is a movement that has influenced the artistic as well as cultural discourses since the 1960s. Though debatable it generally suggests a move away from the modernist conventions that have influenced the Western thought, social life and culture for centuries. Postmodernism specifically is characterized by, a rejection of authority, skepticism towards totalitarian narratives and reality. On the literary level it is applied to make sense of new insights and developments in contemporary literary works. Even if postmodernism succeeded in influencing the literary domain of the world for over seventy years now it is invisible in the Ethiopian literary scene. Thus, it is this gap that motivated the researcher to carry out the study on postmodernism. In this study, an attempt has been made to analyze aspects of postmodernism in the selected Ethiopian Diaspora novels. Nega Mezlekia’s The God Who Begat the Jackal and The Unfortunate Marriage of Azeb Yitades and Dinaw Mengistu’s How to Read the Air and All Our Names are selected for the analysis. The method of the study is textual analysis. Through thorough reading of the novels relevant excerpts are identified and critically analyzed both on the formal and thematic level using the theoretical parameters adapted from postmodern literary theories of Barry Lewis, Brian McHale, Linda Hutcheon and Patricia Waugh. Intertextuality, ontology, metafiction, temporal distortion and fragmentation are used as parameters for the analysis. Accordingly, the study revealed that the authors have brought prior texts like history, popular culture, fiction and non-fiction into the contexts of the novels and borrowed formal styles from different texts that promoted plurality of realities and characterized the novels as pastiches than autonomous works. It is also found out that the novels have foregrounded ontological concerns using alternative worlds, mixing fact and fiction and through description creation paradox to destabilize the truth status of the issues presented in the novels and the mode of existence of the characters. It is also observed that the authors have revealed their consciousness of the fictional status of their stories and various grand narratives exposing their textuality. Temporal distortions and structural and character fragmentation also constitute the novels. Observing the extensive use of aspects of postmodernism and their subversion to question the notions of totality, authority and reality the study concludes that the novels can fall under a category of postmodernist fiction.en-USEthiopian Diaspora novelsEthiopian Diaspora novelsThesis