The Quest for Belonging in a Globalized World: Cultural Displacement and Identity in Anita Desai’s The Zigzag Way

Abstract

In The Zigzag Way (2004), Anita Desai explores the profound human longing for belonging in a world shaped by migration, memory, and globalization. Through the journey of Eric, a rootless American academic who travels to Mexico and discovers traces of his Cornish ancestry, Desai examines how cultural displacement fracture’s identity yet also opens spaces for hybrid self-realization. The novel’s transnational setting linking Europe, North America, and Latin America reflects the global fluidity of the twenty-first century, where home and heritage become unstable markers of selfhood. By intertwining the historical narratives of Cornish miners in Mexico with Eric’s contemporary quest, Desai reveals that belonging is not a matter of geography or bloodline, but an act of remembrance and empathetic connection. Employing postcolonial and globalization theories, this paper argues that The Zigzag Way transforms the experience of exile into a metaphor for modern identity formation, illustrating how individuals must navigate a “zigzag” path through memory, history, and culture to find meaning in an increasingly deterritorialized world.