SearchMy accountHelpBasket0 items

Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature

Conspiracy in Modern Egyptian Literature

By Benjamin Koerber

Format

£115.00

In stock

About this book

Examines the diverse uses of conspiracy theory in Egyptian fiction over the last century
  • Provides the first critical study of conspiracy theory in Arabic literature
  • Examines work by authors who have received little critical attention in English (Youssef Rakha, Mohammad Rabie, Ahmed Naji)
  • Examines the recent “authoritarian turn” of some Egyptian authors
  • Contains an Arabic edition and partial translation of Naguib Surur’s infamous underground quatrains

Conspiracy theory in the Arab World has come to be associated with the rhetoric of Islamist extremists and authoritarian regimes. Yet its principle tropes – omnipotent secret societies, impending apocalypse, heroes who crack codes – have recurred in Arabic literature as well. A number of Egyptian authors, including Ali Ahmad Bakathir, Naguib Surur, Sonallah Ibrahim, Gamal al-Ghitani, and Youssef Rakha have crafted potent narratives of conspiracy that have remained unexamined until now.

In a series of case studies, this book examines the diverse uses of conspiracy theory in Egyptian fiction since the early twentieth century. Read against the historical and intertextual backgrounds of individual authors and their works, conspiracy theory emerges not as a single, rigid ideology, but as a style of writing that is equal parts literary and political.

Reviews

Conspiracy in Modern Egyptian Literature is a valuable contribution to Arabic literary studies. It convincingly argues for the relevance of conspiracism in Egyptian literature and the role of affect in it, while offering a careful postcritical reading.
This is an impressive work of scholarship that draws our attention to a common but underexamined trope in contemporary Arabic literature...Wide-ranging in its source material and richly insightful in its analyses, Conspiracy in Modern Egyptian Literature will be of great interest to any scholar of Arabic literary studies.
Table of contents
Note on Transliteration and TranslationAcknowledgementsIntroduction Chapter 1: Dramaturgies of Conspiracy: Bakathir, Idris, and the July RegimeChapter 2: Naguib Surur: The Poetics and Politics of NiyākaChapter 3: Sonallah Ibrahim’s al-Lajna: Between Critical Theory and Conspiracy Theory Chapter 4: Gamal al-Ghitani’s Ḥikāyāt al-Khabīʾa: The Fitna of Sexual DevianceChapter 5: Paranoia in the Second Degree: Three Recent NovelsEpilogueAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex
About the author

Benjamin Koerber

Benjamin Koerber is Assistant Professor of Arabic language and literature in the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University.

More in this series

See the series →