Arab Culture, Identity and the Novel: Genre, Identity and Agency in Egyptian Fiction (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures)

255 Pages·2007·1.3 MB·English

by  Muhammad Siddiq

ARAB CULTURE AND THE NOVEL
Arab Culture and the Novel explores the status and role of the novel in
modern Arab culture. It postulates the historical experience of modern Egypt
as largely representative of the general condition of other Arab, Islamic, and
postcolonial nation-states, especially as these wrestle with the perennial quest for
a viable sense of personal and collective identity in modernity.
One of the book’s major theses is that certain generic properties of the novel,
such as its constitutive interest in the individual as an autonomous agent of moral,
ethical, political, and sexual choices and desires appear incompatible with
entrenched beliefs and norms of traditional Arab society and culture. How the
Egyptian novel reconciles this proactive, discursive agency with the aesthetic
imperatives of the literary genre is a major concern of this study.
The book tackles such broad questions through sustained textual analysis and
close reading of a significant number of Egyptian novels. It thus consciously
situates the literary text at the heart of the critical performance. Ultimately, the
will of the Arabic novel is to imagine the unthinkable and to reinstate in the Arab
public debate topics long banished from there, such as the body, sexuality,
religious difference, and political dissent may bespeak the absence of a viable
Arab civil society and a crippling cultural impasse. Could the Arabic novel be the
harbinger of such a civil society and the cultural lever to transport it across, and
beyond, the historical impasse?
Muhammad Siddiq is Professor at the Department for Near Eastern Studies,
University of California, Berkeley, USA.
ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN
LITERATURES
Editors
James E. Montgomery
University of Cambridge
Roger Allen
University of Pennsylvania
Philip F. Kennedy
New York University
Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literaturesis a monograph series devoted to
aspects of the literatures of the Near and Middle East and North Africa both
modern and pre-modern. It is hoped that the provision of such a forum will lead
to a greater emphasis on the comparative study of the literatures of this area,
although studies devoted to one literary or linguistic region are warmly encouraged.
It is the editors’ objective to foster the comparative and multi-disciplinary
investigation of the written and oral literary products of this area.
1. SHEHERAZADE THROUGH 5. MAKING THE GREAT BOOK
THE LOOKING GLASS OF SONGS
Eva Sallis Hilary Kilpatrick
2. THE PALESTINIAN 6. THE NOVEL AND THE
NOVEL RURAL IMAGINARY
Ibrahim Taha IN EGYPT, 1880–1985
Samah Selim
3. OF DISHES AND
DISCOURSE 7. IBN ABI TAHIR TAYFUR
Geert Jan van Gelder AND ARABIC WRITERLY
CULTURE
4. MEDIEVAL ARABIC A ninth-century bookman in
PRAISE POETRY Baghdad
Beatrice Gruendler Shawkat M. Toorawa
8. RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES 13. THE ORAL AND THE
IN MODERN MUSLIM AND WRITTEN IN EARLY ISLAM
JEWISH LITERATURES Gregor Schoeler
Edited by Glenda Abramson and Translated by
Hilary Kilpatrick Uwe Vagelpohl
Edited by
9. ARABIC POETRY James Montgomery
Trajectories of modernity and
tradition
14. LITERATURE,
Muhsin J. al-Musawi
JOURNALISM AND THE
AVANT-GARDE
10. MEDIEVAL ANDALUSIAN
Intersection in Egypt
COURTLY CULTURE IN
Elisabeth Kendall
THE MEDITERRANEAN
Three ladies and a lover
Cynthia Robinson 15. THE THOUSAND AND ONE
NIGHTS
11. WRITING AND
Space, travel and
REPRESENTATION IN
transformation
MEDIEVAL ISLAM
Richard van Leeuwen
Muslim Horizons
Julia Bray
16. ARAB CULTURE AND
12. NATIONALISM, ISLAM THE NOVEL
AND WORLD LITERATURE Genre, identity, and
Sites of confluence in the agency in Egyptian
writings of Mahmud al-Masadi fiction
Mohamed-Salah Omri Muhammad Siddiq

ARAB CULTURE AND
THE NOVEL
Genre, identity, and agency
in Egyptian fiction
Muhammad Siddiq
First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2007 Muhammad Siddiq
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library,2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0–203–96114–5 Mastere-bookISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–77260–5 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–96114–5 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77260–0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–96114–8 (ebk)
IN MEMORY OF MY BELOVED WIFE, AMINA;
AND FOR THE BRAVE WRITERS OF EGYPT

CONTENTS
Preface x
Acknowledgments xix
Note on translation and transliteration xxi
1 A genre at war: literary form and historical agency 1
2 Tangents of identity: the poetics of space in the
Egyptian novel 34
3 Divining identities: religion and the Egyptian novel 101
4 Questionable subjects: individuality, representation,
and the Egyptian novel 154
Notes 203
Index 229
ix