Overview

This edited volume provides a wide- ranging introduction to the novelistic oeuvre of the prize- winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah. It addresses a gap in Gurnah scholarship by including chapters which discuss his earlier works that have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Drawing on a range of critical lenses including postcolonial theory, Indian Ocean studies, psychoanalytic theory, migration studies and gender studies, this book provides illuminating commentary on his novels. Attentive to the geographical and historical reach of the narratives, the chapters engage with recurring thematic concerns of departures and arrivals; of complex family relationships; and of precarious cosmopolitan hospitality in situations of changing power relations from the old Indian Ocean monsoon trading system to colonial and postcolonial contexts. The volume concludes with an author interview. It will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of Literary and Cultural Studies, especially Postcolonial Literature, African Studies and Indian Ocean Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of English Studies in Africa.

Full Product Details

Author:   Tina Steiner (Stellenbosch University, South Africa) ,  Maria Olaussen (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.500kg
ISBN:  

9781032258393

ISBN 10:   103225839
Pages:   170
Publication Date:   28 July 2022
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Abdulrazak Gurnah 2. Reading Melancholia in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Pilgrims Way 3. From Black Britain to Black Internationalism in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Pilgrims Way 4. Dottie, Cruel Optimism and the Challenge to Culture 5. Postmodern Materialism in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Dottie: Intertextuality as Ideological Critique of Englishness 6. Yusuf’s Choice: East African Agency During the German Colonial Period in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Novel Paradise 7. The Submerged History of the Indian Ocean in Admiring Silence 8. Narrative Cartographies, ‘Beautiful Things’ and Littoral States in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea 9. ‘It Worked in a Different Way’: Male Same- Sex Desire in the Novels of Abdulrazak Gurnah 10. Honour and Shame in the Construction of Difference in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Novels 11. White- washed Minarets and Slimy Gutters: Abdulrazak Gurnah, Narrative Form and Indian Ocean Space 12. At the Margins: Silences in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Admiring Silence and The Last Gift 13. Locating Abdulrazak Gurnah: Margins, Mainstreams, Mobilities 14. A Conversation with Abdulrazak Gurnah

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Author Information

Tina Steiner, author of Translated People, Translated Texts: Language and Migration in Contemporary African Literature (2009) and Convivial Worlds: Writing Relation from Africa (2021), teaches in the English Department at Stellenbosch University. She co-edits the journal Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies. Maria Olaussen is Professor of English at the University of Gothenburg. She has published widely on African literature and postcolonial studies. She is the editor of Africa Writing Europe: Oppositions, Entanglements, Juxtapositions (2009).

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