Occidentalism: Literary Representations of the Maghrebi Experience of the East-West Encounter

ISBN-10: 1474453236
ISBN-13: 9781474453233
Series: Occidentalism
Pages: 288
Language: English
Published: 2019-06-12
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Author: Smail Salhi Zahia Smail Salhi

Description

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.