Decoding the ‘City': A Study of The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers

Abstract

Graphic novels are truly interdisciplinary in nature for they offer an intriguing mélange of written words and visual images along with components borrowed from several other diverse disciplines. The production of a strictly codified and mappable space has been a concern for graphic novelists as being ‘graphic' is also being ‘spatial' in the sense of blending multiple spaces into one. Several contemporary graphic novelists from India have engaged in similar recreation of urban spaces in their art forms focusing on select cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata with all their fascinating histories and heritages, complex cultures and characteristics. This paper aims to address the problematics of the multiplicity of conceptual, historical, textual as well as physical spaces in Sarnath Banerjee's The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers in terms of the production of urban space.