A01=Charis Olszok
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allegory
animal studies
Author_Charis Olszok
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Category1=Non-Fiction
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Category=DSBJ
COP=United Kingdom
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fiction
Language_English
Libya
Libyan fiction
Middle Eastern literature
Muammar al-Gaddafi
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Price_€20 to €50
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softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781474457460
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 May 2022
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Analysing prominent novelists such as Ibrahim al-Kuni and Hisham Matar, alongside lesser-known and emerging voices, this book introduces the themes and genres of the Libyan novel during the al-Qadhafi era. Exploring latent political protest and environmental lament in the writing of novelists in exile and in the Jamahiriyya, Charis Olszok focuses on the prominence of encounters between humans, animals and the land, the poetics of vulnerability that emerge from them, and the vision of humans as creatures (makhl?q?t) in which they are framed. As Libya transforms into a dictatorial, rentier state, animals represent multi-layered allegories for human suffering, while also becoming focal points for empathy and ethics in their own right. Within reflections on Italian colonisation and ensuing forms of political and social oppression, concomitant with oil, urbanisation, exile and war, staged in remote deserts, isolated coastlines and neglected city parks, The Libyan Novel examines how physical, emotional and intellectual hardship prompts empathetic gazes across species lines. Through engagement with the folkloric and Sufi traditions which define the country's past, and shape its modern fiction, it further traces the spiritually, environmentally and politically holistic imaginings that contest a precarious reality.
Dr Charis Olszok is a Lecturer in Modern Arabic Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. She has translated two novels and numerous pieces of short Arabic fiction into English. This is her first monograph.
