Islam in the eastern African novel

By Emad Mirmotahari

Subjects: LITERARY CRITICISM / Middle Eastern, Intellectual life, In literature, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, African literature, history and criticism, East African literature, Criticism and interpretation, Africa, intellectual life, History and criticism, Islam in literature, LITERARY CRITICISM / African, African literature

Description: "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"--