The Other Problem that Has No Name: Vijay Khurana’s The Passenger Seat

Perhaps strangely, Linda applies Betty Friedan’s 1963 feminist critique of patriarchal society The Feminine Mystique, and specifically the text “The Problem That Has No Name” (0:45), to The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana. An Australian/British author, Khurana wrote this very fine debut novel about the real-life events and the violent actions of two young men from Port Alberni, Northern BC. This novel thus addresses another problem not yet properly identified, except perhaps in more general ways: disaffected or disconnected young men in Western society, who are situated in that space between adolescence and adulthood, and who are making key decisions about who they will become as they mature.