The Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English: The Politics of Anglo Arab and Arab American Literature and Culture - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0748685545 ISBN 13: 9780748685547

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2015

Synopsis

The novel is a largely imported European genre, coming relatively late to the history of Arab letters. It should therefore perhaps come as no surprise that the first novel to have been written by an Arab was written in English (Ameen Rihani's The Book of Khalid, 1911). However, subsequent years saw the flourishing of, first, Arabic novels, then the Francophone Arab novel. Only in the last two decades has the Anglophone Arab novel experienced a second coming, and it is this re-emergence of literary activity that is the focus of this collection.

Opening up the field of diasporic Anglo Arab literature to critical debate, the Companion presents a range of critical responses and pedagogical approaches to the Anglo Arab novel. It offers both classroom-friendly essays and critically sophisticated analyses, bringing together original critical studies of the major Anglo Arab novelists from established and emerging scholars in the field.

About this title

About the Author

Nouri Gana is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature & Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He is the author of Signifying Loss: Toward a Poetics of Narrative Mourning (2011) and editor of The Making of the Tunisian Revolution: Contexts, Architects, Prospects (EUP, 2013) and The Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English (Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

Review

'The Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English, carefully edited by Nouri Gana, brings together the work of some of the very best comparative literature scholars. The essays are all marked by both their theoretical rigor and the clearly expounded close readings of the texts and authors upon which they focus. The Companion is a valuable addition to the relatively small but growing library of critical works devoted to this particular subfield of comparative literature studies.' - Roger Allen, Professor of Arabic & Comparative Literature Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania

'A much needed and welcome anthology. Gana has collected an excellent range of essays of various critical approaches, all of them readable and insightful, as are his contextual contributions. Highly recommended for classroom use.' - Steven Salaita, Associate Professor of English, Virginia Tech

'The Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English is expansive, comprehensive, and unique. To date, it is the only collection dedicated solely to the study of the Anglophone Arab novel. In its geographical scope, it is far-reaching: its chapters cover Arab American, Arab Canadian, Arab Australian, and Arab European output by writers rigorously studied and theorized, pedagogically popular, literary but less established, and little theorized and little studied.' -- Studies in the Novel

'This large anthology constitutes a timely and significant contribution to this subfield of comparative literature. It establishes a genealogy of Anglo Arab literature, which is neither linear nor final, linking novelists from various periods and places together into a constellation, and establishes a nuanced and transformative vision of the tradition. It also invites further theoretical reflections, in particular regarding ethnicity, comparative literature, and the form of the novel.' --Middle Eastern Literatures

About this edition

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0748685545
• ISBN 13: 9780748685547
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Gana Nouri