From rulers to uninvited guests, from women to thieves, from dreams to names, from blindness to torture - in a series of ground-breaking studies, Power, Marginality, and the Body in Medieval Islam explores the multi-layered and complex textual universe of medieval Islam. The power of the ruler sits alongside the power of the trickster, as games of detection and verbal erudition are displayed for the edification of the reader. Humour is not lacking either as male and female characters indulge in various forms of wit that redefine and recast the sacred. For much of this world, the body reigns...

Raised in a Lebanese mountain village, Fedwa Malti-Douglas came to America at the age of 13. After a rich academic career, Prof. Malti-Douglas turned her attention to other muses, publishing a novel in 1998, and poetry (incl. a chapbook of visual poetry). Fedwa’s honors include the 1997 Kuwait Prize in Arts & Letters, & the Nat. Humanities Medal for 2014, presented by Pres. Barack Obama. This volume tells the story of a family torn apart by divorce, death, and exile, & reunited by an inherited form of muscular dystrophy. It has been praised as “a memoir of unpitying...