Alternative imperial projects in the novel "Shalimar the clown" by Salman Rushdie

The article analyzes the he representation of various imperial projects in S. Rushdie's "Shalimar the Clown". The British Empire and the USA, the empires of Alexander the Great and the Great Moguls are considered in the light of the opposition of the Eurocentric colonial understanding of the empire and the postcolonial one, that articulates the "other" as a necessary condition for the alternative and dialogic nature of culture. It is concluded that the "Western" imperial projects are inconsistent with those that are either eastern, or shown through the prism of intertextual references to eastern culture.