Nostalgia in Anglophone Arab Literature

Nationalism, Identity and Diaspora

Tasnim Qutait

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Hardback

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English

I.B. Tauris
20 May 2021

Literary studies: post-colonial literature; Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers; Islamic studies; Nostalgia: general

Series: Written Culture and Identity

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.

By: Tasnim Qutait
Imprint: I.B. Tauris
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 458g
ISBN: 9780755617593
ISBN 10: 0755617592
Series: Written Culture and Identity
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 20 May 2021
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

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).