When Mountains Remember and Rivers Resist: Eco-Critical Readings of Postcolonial Nature in Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner than Skin

Environmental degradation and socio-political marginalization in postcolonial contexts have increasingly attracted scholarly attention, particularly in literature that intertwines ecological and cultural narratives. Against this backdrop, Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner than Skin presents Northern Pakistan’s landscapes as active participants in historical memory and ecological resistance. Consequently, this study examines how mountains, rivers, and glaciers function as living archives of trauma, resilience, and postcolonial environmental consciousness, while also exploring their entanglement with human identity, displacement, and social marginalization. To achieve these objectives, the research adopts a qualitative narrative-ecological approach, anchored in critical hermeneutics. Moreover, the analysis integrates three methods: Narrative Ecological Inquiry, Eco-Semiotic Textual Analysis, and Postcolonial Ecological Discourse Analysis (PEDA), enabling a nuanced reading that situates ecological elements within broader postcolonial and environmental theoretical frameworks. The findings indicate that mountains serve as repositories of collective memory and historical trauma, rivers act as agents of resistance asserting ecological and cultural autonomy, and glaciers embody climate memory, reflecting the intersections of environmental change, colonial legacies, and human exploitation. Furthermore, the novel highlights the socio-ecological marginalization of indigenous communities, showing that human and ecological displacement are inseparable. Ultimately, Khan’s narrative demonstrates the inseparability of ecological agency, postcolonial memory, and decolonial environmental ethics. In conclusion, the study underscores the ethical responsibility to recognize nature’s agency in postcolonial landscapes and recommends further research on eco-critical perspectives in South Asian literature, especially regarding indigenous ecological knowledge, climate narratives, and environmental justice.