Middle Eastern Gothics: Literature, Spectral Modernities and the Restless Past

(Hardback)

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A collection of studies on the Gothic in the Middle East and North Africa.

This is the first collection to cover Gothic literature from the Middle East and North Africa, surveying each of the major Middle Eastern languagesArabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish. In these languages and contexts, the Gothic helps express ongoing literary negotiations with modernity, leaving its distinctive mark on representations of globalization, postcolonialism, and nationalism. At the same time, Middle Eastern literary texts expand the boundaries of the mode on their own terms, refracting broad histories through local and indigenous forms, figures, and narratives commonly associated with the Gothic.

Reviews

"This is a fascinating volume and a pioneering endeavor in the field of Gothic studies. It decentres the Gothic from its Eurocentric context and anchors it in primordial times of Arab and Islamic literary history and culture. Middle Eastern Gothics penetrates whole new geographies and new languages to critically explore the literature produced at pivotal historical junctures of the modern Middle East."-- "Ikram Masmoudi, Associate Professor of Arabic Studies, The University of Delaware"

Author Bio

Karen Grumberg is a professor of Middle Eastern studies and comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also serves as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She is the author of Hebrew Gothic: History and the Poetics of Persecution.