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Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel
Sufi characters – saints, dervishes, wanderers – occur regularly in modern Arabic literature. A select group of novelists to interrogate Sufism as a system of thought and language. In the work of writers like Naguib Mahfouz, Gamal Al-Ghitany, Taher Ouettar, Ibrahim Al-Koni, Mahmud Al-Mas’adi and Tayeb Salih we see a strong intertextual relationship with the Sufi masters of the past, including Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Al-Niffari and Al-Suhrawardi. This relationship becomes a means of interrogating the limits of the creative self, individuality, rationality and the manifold possibilities offered by literature, seeking in a dialogue with the mystical heritage a way of preserving a self under siege from the overwhelming forces of oppression and reaction that have characterised the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

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Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel
Sufi characters – saints, dervishes, wanderers – occur regularly in modern Arabic literature. A select group of novelists to interrogate Sufism as a system of thought and language. In the work of writers like Naguib Mahfouz, Gamal Al-Ghitany, Taher Ouettar, Ibrahim Al-Koni, Mahmud Al-Mas’adi and Tayeb Salih we see a strong intertextual relationship with the Sufi masters of the past, including Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Al-Niffari and Al-Suhrawardi. This relationship becomes a means of interrogating the limits of the creative self, individuality, rationality and the manifold possibilities offered by literature, seeking in a dialogue with the mystical heritage a way of preserving a self under siege from the overwhelming forces of oppression and reaction that have characterised the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

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Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel

Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel

by Ziad Elmarsafy
Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel
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Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel

Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel

by Ziad Elmarsafy

Overview

Sufi characters – saints, dervishes, wanderers – occur regularly in modern Arabic literature. A select group of novelists to interrogate Sufism as a system of thought and language. In the work of writers like Naguib Mahfouz, Gamal Al-Ghitany, Taher Ouettar, Ibrahim Al-Koni, Mahmud Al-Mas’adi and Tayeb Salih we see a strong intertextual relationship with the Sufi masters of the past, including Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Al-Niffari and Al-Suhrawardi. This relationship becomes a means of interrogating the limits of the creative self, individuality, rationality and the manifold possibilities offered by literature, seeking in a dialogue with the mystical heritage a way of preserving a self under siege from the overwhelming forces of oppression and reaction that have characterised the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780748695850
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication date: 08/20/2014
Series: Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Ziad Elmarsafy is Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. In the past he taught at the University of California, Riverside, Wellesley College and New York University. He is the author of The Enlightenment Qur'an: The Politics of Translation and the Construction of Islam (Oneworld, 2009), and co-editor, with Anna Bernard and David Attwell, of Debating Orientalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Table of Contents

Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Ouverture; Chapter One: Naguib Mahfouz: (En)chanting Justice; Chapter Two: Tayeb Salih: The Returns of the Saint; Chapter Three: Al-Masʿadī: Witnessing Immortality; Chapter Four: The Survival of Gamal Al-Ghitany; Chapter Five: Ibrahim Al-Koni: Writing and Sacrifice; Chapter Six: Tahar Ouettar: The Saint and the Nightmare of History; Epilogue: Bahaa Taher, Solidarity and Idealism; Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Journal of Postcolonial Writing Celene Ayat Lizzio

Elmarsafy is to be commended on the ambitious project to encompass a large geographic expanse, and his selections are meant to be illustrative rather than encyclopedic. The work is meticulously detailed.

Elmarsafy brings together an illustrative spectrum of seminal Arab authors, and ably illuminates the persistence of Sufi idioms and voices in contemporary literary texts. He argues convincingly that these appropriations are intricately linked not only to questions of besieged national identities and ideological bankruptcy, but perhaps more pressingly to aspects of the journey of the self, the limits of the language and form of the novel, and ultimately, the very habitability of the world of the writer.

Samia Mehrez

Elmarsafy brings together an illustrative spectrum of seminal Arab authors, and ably illuminates the persistence of Sufi idioms and voices in contemporary literary texts. He argues convincingly that these appropriations are intricately linked not only to questions of besieged national identities and ideological bankruptcy, but perhaps more pressingly to aspects of the journey of the self, the limits of the language and form of the novel, and ultimately, the very habitability of the world of the writer.

Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations Göran Larsson

I genuinely enjoyed reading Elmarsafy’s well-researched analysis and presentation of contemporary Arab novelists…his book will be a solid companion for all who want to develop their thinking and knowledge of Sufism and Arabic literature.

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Reference
Foreign Language Study Aids & Dictionaries
Arabic Language Reference
Reference
Foreign Language Study Aids & Dictionaries
Arabic Language Reference

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