Abstract
This article investigates the emergence of hybrid narrative forms in late twentieth-century postcolonial novels as a constitutive feature of transnational prose. Drawing on a corpus of eight major works by authors including Salman Rushdie, Nuruddin Farah, and Vladimir Nabokov, the study employs close reading and comparative textual analysis to identify three recurrent hybrid strategies: magical realism as a mode of transnational allegory, formal fragmentation as an index of diasporic consciousness, and the incorporation of oraliture (oral narrative traditions) as a counter-discourse to colonial historiography. The analysis reveals that these hybrid forms function not merely as aesthetic innovations but as deliberate narrative technologies for negotiating multiple cultural and temporal horizons. Quantitative coding of narrative techniques across the corpus demonstrates that hybridity increases in proportion to the author's experience of exile or migration, with statistically significant correlations between geographical displacement and the use of non-linear temporality and code-switching. The findings suggest that transnational prose does not simply reflect postcolonial identity but actively constructs it through formal experimentation. This study contributes to narrative theory by foregrounding the material and historical conditions that drive formal hybridity, challenging Eurocentric models that treat such experimentation as purely literary. The conclusion argues that hybrid narrative forms offer a paradigm for understanding how late twentieth-century fiction reconfigures the relationship between nation, narrative, and subjecthood in an era of intensified globalization.
Keywords
transnational prose, hybrid narrative forms, postcolonial novels, magical realism, fragmentation, oraliture, diaspora, late 20th century