Glaciers That Bleed, Mountains That Speak: Nonhuman Agency and Ecological Injury in Gauhar's An Abundance of Wild Roses

Abstract

Climate change has significantly transformed the fragile mountain ecosystems of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, rendering glaciers, forests, and biodiversity increasingly vulnerable to ecological degradation. Literary narratives set within these landscapes offer a valuable site for examining how environmental crisis is represented and understood, yet relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the way nonhuman entities are granted agency and voice within South Asian fiction. This study examines Feryal Ali Gauhar's novel An Abundance of Wild Roses through the ecocritical framework developed by Garrard (2012), focusing in particular on the tropes of wilderness, dwelling, apocalypse, and animals. Employing a qualitative textual analysis, the article explores how mountains, glaciers, forests, and animals in the novel function not merely as passive settings but as active ecological presences that register, communicate, and respond to environmental injury. The analysis demonstrates that the novel reimagines wilderness as a living and wounded entity whose suffering mirrors the consequences of climate change and unsustainable development, while the disruption of dwelling and the erosion of indigenous ecological knowledge challenge conventional anthropocentric assumptions embedded in mainstream literary representation. The study argues that reading the mountain and the glacier through Garrard's foundational tropes allows these entities to be understood not merely as backdrop or symbol but as literary agents whose wounds carry their own narrative and ethical weight. By applying Garrard's tropes to Gauhar's text, this article offers a fresh interpretation of the novel's environmental imagination and contributes to the growing body of scholarship on South Asian ecocriticism and mountain ecologies.

Keywords: Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism, Nonhuman Agency, Ecological Injury, An Abundance of Wild Roses, Feryal Ali Gauhar, Mountain Ecologies