Islam in the Eastern African Novel (Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World)

Islam and Eastern African Novel uses Islam as lens through which to examine fiction produced in a particular part of Africa, renewing conceptual and definitional conversations about race, nation, coloniality, diaspora, and the novel form itself in an African and postcolonial context. Cover......Page 1 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Note from the Editor......Page 10 Preface......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 1 Paradises Lost: A Portrait of the Precolony in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise......Page 42 2 The Other Diaspora in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Admiring Silence and By the Sea......Page 66 3 Situational Identities: Exiled Selves in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Memory of Departure and Pilgrims Way......Page 88 4 “Men with Civilizations but Without Countries ”:Afro- Indians at History’s End......Page 112 5 Revisiting Nuruddin Farah’s From a Crooked Rib......Page 138 6 A Typology of Political Islam: Religion and the State in Nuruddin Farah’s Variations on theTheme of an African Dictatorship Trilogy......Page 156 Conclusion......Page 182 Notes......Page 184 Bibliography......Page 204 Index......Page 214 "Islam in the Eastern African Novel engages the novels of three important eastern African novelists--Nuruddin Farah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and M.G. Vassanji--by centering Islam as an interpretive lens and critical framework. Mirmotahari argues that recognizing the centrality of Islam in the fictional works of these three novelists has important consequences for the theoretical and conceptual conversations that characterize the study of African literature. The overdue and sustained attention to Islam in these works complicates the narrative of coloniality, the nature of the nation and the nation-state, the experience of diaspora and exile, the meaning of indigenaity, and even the form and history of the novel itself"-- Provided by publisher "Islam in the Eastern African Novel engages the novels of three important eastern African novelists--Nuruddin Farah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and M. G. Vassanji--by centering Islam as an interpretive lens and critical framework. Mirmotahari argues that recognizing the centrality of Islam in the fictional works of these three novelists has important consequences for the theoretical and conceptual conversations that characterize the study of African literature. The overdue and sustained attention to Islam in these works complicates the narrative of coloniality, the nature of the nation and the nation-state, the experience of diaspora and exile, the meaning of indigenaity, and even the form and history of the novel itself"--

Islam in the Eastern African Novel offers an idiosyncratic perspective on the sub-Saharan African novel by engaging three novelists from eastern Africa-Nuruddin Farah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and M. G. Vassanji. Mirmotahari argues that Islam is not an incidental factor in the fiction produced by these writers, but a central presence that renews conversations about nationhood, race, diaspora, coloniality, and the novel itself as a form in a sub-Saharan African and postcolonial context.

Islam and the Eastern African Novel offers an idiosyncratic perspective on the sub-Saharan African novel. Mirmotahari argues that Islam is not an incidental factor in Gurnah and Farah's novels, but a central organising presence that generates new conceptual questions and demands new critical frameworks with which to approach categories like nationhood, race and racial paradigms in Africa, diaspora, immigration, and Africa's multiple colonial pasts This study of the sub-Saharan African novel interprets representations of Islam as a central organising presence that generates new conceptual questions and demands new critical frameworks with which to approach categories like nationhood, race, diaspora, immigration, and Africa's multiple colonial pasts.