Reimagining Nationhood: The Politics of Identity and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Australian Fiction

Abstract

Contemporary Australian fiction offers a powerful re-examination of nationhood in an age marked by migration, globalization, and reconciliation. This paper explores how writers such as Christos Tsiolkas, Nam Le, Michelle de Kretser, Alexis Wright, and Tim Winton reconfigure the concept of Australia as a multicultural, postcolonial space shaped by contested identities and hybrid experiences. Drawing on theories of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and postcolonial identity, it argues that recent Australian narratives reject singular notions of national belonging in favour of plural, intersectional models rooted in empathy and difference. Through a close reading of selected novels and short stories, the paper demonstrates how contemporary writers negotiate tensions between the local and the global, the settler and the migrant, and the Indigenous and the diasporic—constructing a new literary cartography of belonging.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199392021.2025.21-28.