Recent years have witnessed giant leaps in the strength of database technologies, creating a new level of capability to develop advanced applications that add value at unprecedented levels in all areas of information management and utilization. Parallel to this evolution is a need in the academia and industry for authoritative references to the research in this area, to establish a comprehensive knowledge base that will enable the information technology and managerial communities to realize maximum benefits from these innovations.

John Erickson examines four major authors from the "third-world"--Assia Djebar, Abdelkebir Khatibi, Tahar ben Jelloun, and Salman Rushdie--all of whom have critiqued the relationship between Islam and the West. Erickson analyzes the narrative strategies they deploy to explore the encounter between Western and Islamic values and reveals their use of the cultural resources of Islam, and their intertextual exchanges with other "third-world" writers. These writers, he argues, valorize expansiveness and indeterminacy in order to represent individuals and groups that live on the margins of...