Nostalgia in Anglophone Arab Literature: Nationalism, Identity and Diaspora
This book offers an in-depth engagement with the growing body of Anglophone Arab fiction in the context of theoretical debates around memory and identity. Against the critical tendency to dismiss nostalgia as a sentimental trope of immigrant narratives, Qutait sheds light on the creative uses to which it is put in the works of Rabih Alameddine, Ahdaf Soueif, Hisham Matar, Leila Aboulela, Randa Jarrar, Rawi Hage, and others.

Arguing for the necessity of theorising cultural memory beyond Eurocentric frameworks, the book demonstrates how Arab novelists writing in English draw on nostalgia as a touchstone of Arabic literary tradition from pre-Islamic poetry to the present. Qutait situates Anglophone Arab fiction within contentious debates about the place of the past in the Arab world, tracing how writers have deployed nostalgia as an aesthetic strategy to deal with subject matter ranging from the Islamic golden age, the era of anti-colonial struggle, the failures of the postcolonial state and of pan-Arabism, and the perennial issue of the diaspora's relationship to the homeland.

Making a contribution to the transnational turn in memory studies while focusing on a region underrepresented in this field, this book will be of interest for researchers interested in cultural memory, postcolonial studies and the literatures of the Middle East.

1137898354
Nostalgia in Anglophone Arab Literature: Nationalism, Identity and Diaspora
This book offers an in-depth engagement with the growing body of Anglophone Arab fiction in the context of theoretical debates around memory and identity. Against the critical tendency to dismiss nostalgia as a sentimental trope of immigrant narratives, Qutait sheds light on the creative uses to which it is put in the works of Rabih Alameddine, Ahdaf Soueif, Hisham Matar, Leila Aboulela, Randa Jarrar, Rawi Hage, and others.

Arguing for the necessity of theorising cultural memory beyond Eurocentric frameworks, the book demonstrates how Arab novelists writing in English draw on nostalgia as a touchstone of Arabic literary tradition from pre-Islamic poetry to the present. Qutait situates Anglophone Arab fiction within contentious debates about the place of the past in the Arab world, tracing how writers have deployed nostalgia as an aesthetic strategy to deal with subject matter ranging from the Islamic golden age, the era of anti-colonial struggle, the failures of the postcolonial state and of pan-Arabism, and the perennial issue of the diaspora's relationship to the homeland.

Making a contribution to the transnational turn in memory studies while focusing on a region underrepresented in this field, this book will be of interest for researchers interested in cultural memory, postcolonial studies and the literatures of the Middle East.

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Nostalgia in Anglophone Arab Literature: Nationalism, Identity and Diaspora

Nostalgia in Anglophone Arab Literature: Nationalism, Identity and Diaspora

by Tasnim Qutait
Nostalgia in Anglophone Arab Literature: Nationalism, Identity and Diaspora

Nostalgia in Anglophone Arab Literature: Nationalism, Identity and Diaspora

by Tasnim Qutait

Hardcover

$130.00 
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Overview

This book offers an in-depth engagement with the growing body of Anglophone Arab fiction in the context of theoretical debates around memory and identity. Against the critical tendency to dismiss nostalgia as a sentimental trope of immigrant narratives, Qutait sheds light on the creative uses to which it is put in the works of Rabih Alameddine, Ahdaf Soueif, Hisham Matar, Leila Aboulela, Randa Jarrar, Rawi Hage, and others.

Arguing for the necessity of theorising cultural memory beyond Eurocentric frameworks, the book demonstrates how Arab novelists writing in English draw on nostalgia as a touchstone of Arabic literary tradition from pre-Islamic poetry to the present. Qutait situates Anglophone Arab fiction within contentious debates about the place of the past in the Arab world, tracing how writers have deployed nostalgia as an aesthetic strategy to deal with subject matter ranging from the Islamic golden age, the era of anti-colonial struggle, the failures of the postcolonial state and of pan-Arabism, and the perennial issue of the diaspora's relationship to the homeland.

Making a contribution to the transnational turn in memory studies while focusing on a region underrepresented in this field, this book will be of interest for researchers interested in cultural memory, postcolonial studies and the literatures of the Middle East.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780755617593
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 05/20/2021
Series: Written Culture and Identity
Pages: 200
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Tasnim Qutait is a visiting postdoctoral researcher at SOAS University of London and a recipient of the International Postdoc Grant funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Defining Nostalgia
The Uses of Nostalgia
Language and Identity
Reading Anglophone Arab Writing
Memory as A Strategic Aesthetic

2. Chapter One: “The Chaos of Lost Empires”
Standing By the Ruins
The Imagined Present of the Past
Traces and Translations

3. Chapter Two: “A War Between Yesterday and Tomorrow”
Rewriting Colonial Histories
Postcolonial Parallels
Weaving Connections

4. Chapter Three: “Fractured Country, Broken Home”
Leaders, Fathers and The Un-Homely Home
Nostalgia for Mother/Lands
Cacophonous Countries

5. Chapter Four: “Europe is My Dark Continent”
Transplanted Nationalism
Diaspora Community and Instability “Back Home”
Transnational Islam in the Diaspora
Mongrel Humanity and Undetermined History

6. Conclusion

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