Eco-Anxiety And Climate Colonialism In Fatima Bhutto’S The Runaways (2019)

Abstract

This paper examines the entwined themes of eco-anxiety and climate colonialism in Fatima Bhutto’s 2019 novel The Runaways. Using ecocriticism and postcolonial theory as analytical frameworks, the study explores how the novel positions environmental degradation as both a lived reality and a structural legacy of colonial and capitalist exploitation. The psychological states of the protagonists—Anita, Monty, and Sunny—mirror the collective anxieties of societies in the Global South, grappling with ecological collapse and geopolitical marginalization. This research contends that The Runaways represents eco-anxiety not as a personal neurosis but as an embedded condition shaped by histories of imperial extraction and modern inequalities. Through metaphor, setting, and character development, Bhutto articulates a powerful literary indictment of climate injustice and the burdens of postcolonial environmental trauma.

Keywords: Fatima Bhutto, eco-anxiety, climate colonialism, ecocriticism, postcolonialism, Global South, solastalgia, slow violence, environmental trauma