![]() In today’s liberal and anti-racist society, ‘going native’ is understandably considered a derogatory and offensive term. To take the nearest definition to hand – from the Queen’s University of Belfast’s “ Imperial Archive” – the concept of “going native” would erect an existential fortification for colonisers who found themselves besieged by alternative cultures: ![]() Once, one could found an empire upon the fear of “going native.” This originally prerogative term conveyed abandoning a civilised sensibility – one which would be at home anywhere in the empire – for a lesser and characteristically local subjectivity. “The Khan” explores the scrupulous diplomat’s deepest fear – that of “going native.” ![]() John William Wall wrote “ The Khan” in the spring of 1948, whilst stationed as the British Consul to Casablanca, and this story would be included in his first volume of fiction, Ringstones and Other Curious Tales (1951). Let us join Sarban at the Café Novin for a story. ![]()
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