Nostalgia in Anglophone Arab Literature: Nationalism, Identity and Diaspora (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."-- Provided by publisher Interweaving theories and studies of memory, nostalgia, ruins and archives with the works of Fadia Faqir, Ahdaf Soueif, Jamal Mahioub and others, in this book Tasnim Qutait sheds light on understudied Arab British writers. 0Arguing that nostalgia challenges nationalist and political ideologies rather than reiterating them, Qutait uses nostalgia as a concept interlinking loss, memory and trauma. Anlysing both Arabic and English language texts, she questions the binary of negative and positive forms of nostalgia, emerging from its etymology as a sickness in Western tradition, through invoking the multifarious strands related to nostalgic emotion in Arab traditions.0Offering an in-depth engagement with Anglophone Arab fiction in the context of critical and theoretical debates around memory, history and nostalgia, this book bridges the gap between Anglophone and Arabic scholarship, contributing to the ongoing postcolonial and transnational turn in memory studies 1. Introduction Defining Nostalgia The Uses of Nostalgia Language and Identity Reading Anglophone Arab Writing Memory as A Strategic Aesthetic -- 2. Chapter One: ?The Chaos of Lost Empires? Standing By the Ruins The Imagined Present of the Past Traces and Translations -- 3. Chapter Two: ?A War Between Yesterday and Tomorrow? Rewriting Colonial Histories Postcolonial Parallels Weaving Connections -- 4. Chapter Three: ?Fractured Country, Broken Home? Leaders, Fathers and The Un-Homely Home Nostalgia for Mother/Lands Cacophonous Countries -- 5. Chapter Four: ?Europe is My Dark Continent? Transplanted Nationalism Diaspora Community and Instability ?Back Home? Transnational Islam in the Diaspora Mongrel Humanity and Undetermined History -- 6. Conclusion Title Page Copyright Page Contents Preface Transliteration Introduction Chapter 1: The Chaos of Lost Empires: Rabih Alameddine, Sabiha Khemir and Yasmin Zahran Chapter 2: Rewriting Colonial Encounters: Ahdaf Soueif, Fadia Faqir and Jamal Mahjoub Chapter 3: National Histories and Family Narratives: Hisham Matar, Leila Aboulela and Randa Jarrar Chapter 4: Reimagining Belonging in the Diaspora: Robin Yassin-Kassab, Selma Dabbagh and Rawi Hage Conclusion Notes Work Cited Index