Community, Faith, and Resistance: Writing Religious Resurgence in Select British Muslim Fiction

This book looks at texts produced before and after 9/11 by novelists with Muslim backgrounds in Britain. It delves into the ways in which the politics of representation have changed in the wake of 9/11 and highlights the conflicts that arise in these coming-of-age narratives between the demands of a liberal individualist lifestyle and those of community, family, and faith. Drawing on the works of Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Nadeem Aslam, Qaisra Shahraz, Leila Aboulela, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Zia Haider Rahman, and Ahdaf Soueif, Community, Faith, and Resistance discusses how these authors distinguish between Islam as a religion and Islam as a culture and negotiate complex themes of religion, representation, recognition, and secularism in their works.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers, particularly those focused on literature, politics, cultural studies, South Asian studies, Islamic studies, and decolonial studies, providing valuable insights and fostering deeper understanding in these disciplines.

Sk Sagir Ali is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Midnapore College, India. His published works include the edited books Religion in South Asian Anglophone Literature: Traversing Resistance Margins and Extremism; Literature and Theory: Contemporary Signposts and Critical Surveys; War on Terror: Nation, Democracy, and Liberalisation; Writing Disaster in South Asian Literature and Culture; and Marginal Narratives and the Question of Human Rights in Asian Pacific Literature. His articles have appeared in journals of repute such as South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, and the Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies. Ali is series editor of the Routledge book series, “Peripheral Lives in Asia: Reimagining Nationalisms, Citizenship, and Precarity in the 21st Century”.