This novel utilises a series of flashbacks which, fragment the story, in which the twins reminisce about their childhood. Roy employs the use of many distinguishing and interlinking features of postcolonial text such as the issues of identity, hybridity and white superiority as an attempt to draw attention to the chaotic situation of postcolonial India.

Throughout the past century postcolonial text has risen to prominence following the independence of many colonised countries. Postcolonial texts, as stated by Professor Hans Berten ,”studies the relationship of the coloniser and the colonised as well as the aftermath of the postcolonial country.” An example of such a discourse is ‘The God of Small Things’ , by Indian author Arundhati Roy which explores postcolonial India, during the 1960s through the lives fraternal twins, Rahel and Estha, and their family in Ayemenem, India .

Another instance of allusion of British culture is from the twin’s uncle Chacko , a former Rhodes Scholar, who often quotes from ‘the Great Gatsby’ as he describes it is another story of an “Oxford man” . Roy employs these intertextual links in order to depict the typical action of a postcolonial community in which the oppressed race subserves themselves to the colonisers by converting to the coloniser’s culture.
During the 1960s the twins living with their mother and her anglicized family is caught up in the family’s attempt to attain a new identity. In this anglicized family, the twins are often found speaking in English. Rahel, the female twin, expresses her love for her mother by quoting “We be of one blood, ye and I” alluding to Kipling’s Jungle Book, a famous British novel.

Hybridity is a major concept in postcolonial novels, whereby the values of the coloniser and colonised are merged and a new side of the story. Sophie Mol, cousin to the twins Estha and Rahel, is born