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Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature

OccidentalismLiterary Representations of the Maghrebi Experience of the East-West Encounter

By Zahia Smail Salhi

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About this book

Explores the encounters between East and West in Maghrebi literature in the pre-1945 period
  • Focuses on the work of early Algerian intelligentsia known as the Young Algerians and their insistent letters to the Occident
  • Depicts the Maghrebi encounter with the Occident as a plea to extend Western civilisation to all factions of the colonised society
  • Engages with the work of early French feminists and its impact on the birth of Algerian feminism
  • Includes readings of key texts by Chukri Khodja, Saad ben Ali, Djamila Débêche, Fadhma Amrouche, Mouloud Feraoun, Mohamed Dib, Ferhat Abbas and Albert Memmi, amongst many others

Maghrebi literature published in the first half of the twentieth century is a subject that seldom receives focused scholarly treatment. This is partly due to limited availability of the books, some of which were printed in as few as fifty copies. Zahia Smail Salhi tracked down these rare works and put them in the spotlight for the first time here. Through close textual analysis and in-depth engagement with religious and socio-political contexts, Smail Salhi determines whether these texts belong to a collective formation we may call ‘Occidentalism’. In so doing, this book reintegrates the pre-1945 Maghrebi novels into the history and study of modern Arabic literature.

Reviews

It is a first-rate book that gives a long-overdue voice to the Maghreb in its own right and not a tailpiece to the broader Middle East. [...] Prof Salhi has given us insights into Maghreb scholarship so eloquently. I cannot recommend this book too highly.
Ambitious and lucid, this book provides a comprehensive view of modern Algerian literature originating in the colonial period through the lens of "occidentalism." It is a valuable addition to the scholarship on the enduring, complex, and shifting relationship between colonizer and colonized in the production of literary knowledge.
Table of contents
IntroductionChapter One: The Maghreb and the Occident: Towards the Construction of an Occidentalist DiscourseChapter Two: From the Faraway Orient to the Reclaimed Occident: French Civilisation, Religious Conversion, and Cultural AssimilationChapter Three: The Occident and the Barbary Corsairs: Pre-Colonial Maghrebi Encounters with the Occident Chapter Four: "La France, c’est moi": Love and Infatuation with the OccidentChapter Five: The Occident and the Oriental Woman: Rescuing the Oriental Man’s Victim?Chapter Six: The New Maghrebi Woman and the Occident: From Occidentophilia to AmbivalenceChapter Seven: The End of the Chimera: Disillusion, Alienation and AmbivalenceAfterwordNotesBibliographyIndex
About the author

Zahia Smail Salhi

Zahia Smail Salhi is Chair of Modern Arabic Studies, University of Manchester and Vice-President of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. She served as Judge of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2013) and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation (2016). She was Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (2013-2016) and Member of Sub-panel 27 (Area Studies), Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014).

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