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Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature

Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggles

By Tahia Abdel Nasser

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£115.00

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About this book

Examines the effects of colonialism and independence on modern Arab autobiography written in Arabic, English and French

In memoirs, Arab writers have invoked solitude in moments of deep public involvement. Focusing on Taha Hussein, Sonallah Ibrahim, Assia Djebar, Latifa al-Zayyat, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Edward Said, Haifa Zangana, and Radwa Ashour, this book reads a range of autobiographical forms, sources, and affinities with other literatures.

Taking a comparative approach, Nasser shows the local sources of contemporary Arab autobiography, adaptations of a global genre, and cultural exchange. She also examines different aspects of the contemporary autobiography as it has evolved in the Arab world during the past half-century, focusing on the particularity of the genre written in different languages but pertaining to one overarching Arab culture. Drawing on memoirs, testimonies, autobiographical novels, poetic autobiography, journals, and diaries, she examines solitude and national struggles in contemporary Arab autobiography.

Key Features
  • Traces the effects of anticolonial and anti-imperialist movements on Arab autobiographical production in Arabic, English, and French in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries
  • Provides a new assessment of autobiographical works in Arab literature and a contribution to discussions of postcolonialism and world literature
  • Considers the genre’s affinities with other literatures in the global South
  • Examines the effects of national movements on contemporary reworkings of the genre in which Arab writers re-envision subjectivity in national cultures and transnational networks

Reviews

Clearly, Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggles constitutes a significant intervention in Arab and autobiographical studies. The original contribution of Nasser’s monograph is not limited to providing a fresh perspective on an “embargoed” genre from the Arab region, to use a Saidian term. An equally significant quality of Nasser’s study lies in her comparative approach through which she draws from the literary traditions of the Global South to analyze Arab literary autobiographical narratives.'
The corpus is well-chosen, germane, and spans a range of texts that have never been studied together. The chapter breakdown is extremely interesting in the way it pairs language, location and genre. The methodological framework is highly original in that it reads this multilingual Arab corpus as a complex instance of a fully embodied comparative literature. Moreover, the framing dialectic that moves between the subject's solitude/ belonging is richly productive and offers a new way of thinking about the texts and the tradition they represent."
Table of contents

Series Editor’s Foreword

Acknowledgements

A Note on Transliteration and Translation

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Literary Solitude: Autobiography, Modernity, and Independence

1 From Solitude to Stealth: Taha Hussein and Sonallah Ibrahim

2 Revolutionary Memoirs: Assia Djebar and Latifa al-Zayyat

3 Palestine Song: Mahmoud Darwish and Mourid Barghouti

4 Revolutionary Solitude: Edward Said and Najla Said

5 Dreaming of Solitude: Haifa Zangana and Alia Mamdouh

6 Tahrir Memoirs: Radwa Ashour and Mona Prince

Epilogue: Arab Literature, World Literature

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the author

Tahia Abdel Nasser

Tahia Abdel Nasser is Assistant Professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. She has published in Comparative Literature Studies, Yearbook of Comparative Literature, Alif: Journal of Contemporary Poetics, Journal of Arabic Literature, Dictionary of African Biography (2011), Mahmoud Darwish: The Adam of Two Edens (2001) and The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology (2001).

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