Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel

✍ Scribed by Ziad Elmarsafy

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 273
• Series: Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Close readings of 9 contemporary Arab novelists who use Sufism as a literary strategy. Sufi characters - saints, dervishes, wanderers - occur regularly in modern Arabic literature. A select group of novelists interrogates Sufism as a system of thought and language. In the work of writers likeNaguib Mahfouz, Gamal Al-Ghitany, Taher Ouettar, Ibrahim Al-Koni, Mahmud Al-Mas'adi and Tayeb Salih we see a strong intertextual relationship with the Sufi masters of the past, including Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Al-Niffari and Al-Suhrawardi. This relationship interrogates the limits of the creative self, individuality, rationality and all the possibilities offered by literature. In thisand dialogue with the mystical heritage, these novelists seek a way of preserving a self under siege from the overwhelming forces of oppression andreaction that characterised the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

✦ Table of Contents

Copyright
Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Ouverture
1. Naguib Mahfouz: (En)chanting Justice
2. Tayeb Salih: The Returns of the Saint
3. Mahmud Al-Maʿadı: Witnessing Immortality
4. The Survival of Gamal Al-Ghitany
5. Ibrahim Al-Koni: Writing and Sacrifice
6. Tahar Ouettar: The Saint and the Nightmare of History
Epilogue: Bahaa Taher, Solidarity and Idealism
Notes
Bibliography
Index

✦ Subjects

Foreign Language Study, Literary Criticism, Literary Collections, Ancient & Classical, General, Arabic, Middle Eastern