The Female Suffering Body: Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East)

Hamdar, Abir

ISBN 10: 0815633653 / ISBN 13: 9780815633655

Published by Syracuse University Press, 2014

About this Item

Series: Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East. Num Pages: 184 pages. BIC Classification: 2CSR; DSK; JFFG; JFSJ1. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 238 x 156 x 16. Weight in Grams: 376. . 2014. Hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780815633655

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Female Suffering Body: Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East)
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815633653
• ISBN 13: 9780815633655
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Although there is a history of rich, complex, and variegated representations of female illness in Western literature over the last two centuries, the sick female body has traditionally remained outside the Arab literary imagination. Hamdar takes on this historical absence in The Female Suffering Body by exploring how both literary and cultural perspectives on female physical illness and disability in the Arab world have transformed in the modern period. In doing so, she examines a range of both canonical and hitherto marginalized Arab writers, including Mahmoud Taymur, Yusuf al-Sibai, Ghassan Kanafani, Naguib Mahfouz, Ziyad Qassim, Colette Khoury, Hanan al-Shaykh, Alia Mamdouh, Salwa Bakr, Hassan Daoud, and Betool Khedair. Hamdar finds that, over the course of sixty years, female physical illness and disability has moved from the margins of Arabic literature—where it was largely the subject of shame, disgust, or revulsion—to the center, as a new wave of female writers have sought to give voice to the "female suffering body."

About the Author

<b>Abir Hamdar</b> is a lecturer at Durham University in Durham, England. She has published several articles in such journals as <i>Feminist Theory</i>, <i>Journal of Cultural Research</i>, and <i>Al-Raida</i>.