Writing Islam from a South Asian Muslim Perspective: Rushdie, Hamid, Aslam, Shamsie

ISBN-13: 9781137554376 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 196 str.

Madeline Clements

Opis

This book investigates how four South Asian writers of Muslim background (Salman Rushdie, Mohsin Hamid, Nadeem Aslam, and Kamila Shamsie) have responded in English to the challenge of writing about Islamic faith ties in the aftermath of the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks and the ensuing 'War on Terror'.

Recenzje

'Highlighting how a number of key contemporary writers of Muslim background have strategically engaged with rigidly constructed notions of 'Islam', this book provides a sensitive and intelligent reading of South Asian fictions. In its wide-angled and transnational perspective, it is not only important but engaging and timely, demonstrating how these writers take us directly to the centre of issues that are crucial to our times'. Susheila Nasta, Professor of Modern Literature, The Open University, UK

'This important book considers how some of the best-known contemporary Pakistani English language novelists negotiate their relationship with Islam and the West. Rejecting conventional views of such writers as either anthropologically 'representative' of their Muslim cultural heritage, or naively exotic pawns in a culture war between supposedly clashing civilizations, Madeline Clements shows how the authors' own complex personal and cultural affiliations give shape to novels that challenge the expectations and stereotypes of a putative Western reader. She is sensitive to the dynamic textual strategies deployed to give this body of work its distinctive yet diverse quality. Her subtle and powerful readings of novels by Salman Rushdie, Mohsin Hamid, Nadeem Aslam and Kamila Shamsie set a new benchmark for criticism that would do justice to the novels as works of art while at the same time staying alert to the shaping role of a fraught global political context.' Peter Morey, Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies, University of East Anglia, UK

O autorze

Madeline Clements is Research Lecturer in English at Teesside University, prior to which she was Assistant Professor of English at Forman Christian College, Lahore. She completed her doctoral thesis at the University of East London. Her articles have been published in journals and books including Sohbet, Wasafiri, and Imagining Muslims. She reviews regularly for Dawn’s Books and Authors supplement, and for the TLS.