Modern Arabic Fantastic
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€107.99
A01=Alexandra Shraytekh
Arabic fantastic
Author_Alexandra Shraytekh
Category=DSBH
Category=DSBJ
Category=DSK
Category=DSM
comparative literature
disability
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fantastic fiction
forthcoming
Gothic
horror
magical realism
minority
popular culture
Product details
- ISBN 9781399556033
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Jul 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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The rich and lengthy Arabic corpus of fantastic fiction is one hidden in plain sight. In more broad studies of both fantastic fiction and Arabic literary and cultural history, it is notably absent. It is rarely, if ever, read as a corpus, much less as one with a rich, meandering, and turbulent history.
As fantastic modes have risen in global popularity over the past two decades, this book joins the revisionist wave of exciting critical interventions questioning the cornerstones of cultural history. It reads the current proliferation of Arabic fantastic stories as a potent return of the repressed and illuminates the persistence of premodern forms and narratives in contemporary cultural practice. Moreover, the book proposes essential categories, epistemes and historical timelines for effectively understanding the corpus of the modern Arabic fantastic, arguing that the fantastic is becoming a modern realism of our times.
Alexandra Shraytekh is Mellon-Bridge Assistant Professor of Arabic and International Literary and Visual Studies at Tufts University. Her academic publications include articles and book chapters on Gothic literature; magical realism; Arab-Jewish cinematic traditions; imaginaries of the nation. Her Arabic novels have been translated to English, French and German. She is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award (2022-2027) and was the Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin (2022).
