BOOKS RECEIVED

Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature Series editor: Rasheed El-Enany

Writing Beirut: Mappings of the City in the Modern Arabic Novel by Samira Aghacy studies the spatial representation of Beirut in sixteen Arabic novels. It analyses the way authors uses the spaces of the city, mixing reality and imagination, to create their own version of Beirut. Aghacy studies the city according to different frameworks, including the urban-rural dichotomy, the metaphor of the body as representation of the city and the contrast between public and private space. EUP, UK, March 2015. ISBN: 9780-7486-9624-6, 240pp, Hbk, £70.00/$120.00

Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel by Ziad Elmarsafy studies the use of Sufi characters and themes by Arab authors of the second half of the twentieth century. Among the authors featured in this monograph there are Naguib Mahfouz, Tayeb Salih and Ibrahim AlKoni. EUP, UK, August 2014. ISBN: 978-0-7486-9585-0, 256pp, Pbk, £24.99/$40.00, ISBN: 978-0748641406, Hbk, £65.00/$110.00, Kindle edn., £65.00/$102.30

Autobiographical Identities in Contemporary Arab Culture by Valerie Anishchenkova investigates the transformations that autobiographical discourse in the Arab world has undergone in the last 40 years. The author wants to offer a perspective on how the recent radical changes in Arab societies have affected the identity-making process. EUP, UK, July 2014. ISBN: 978-07486-4340-0, Hbk, 226pp, £70.00/$120.00

War and Occupation in Iraqi Fiction by Ikram Masmoudi aims to discover how Iraqi fiction has dealt with the periods of dictatorship, war and occupation which characterized the country’s recent history. The author focuses on the way the relation between the individual and the sovereign power is built, the perspective used to describe the historical set of the novels, and the “new Iraq” of the most recent novels. EUP, UK, June 2015. ISBN: 9780748696550, 238pp, Hbk, £70.00/$120.00

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