Critical Perspectives on Abdulrazak Gurnah

Tina Steiner, Maria Olaussen, Tina Steiner, Maria Olaussen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032258393
• eBook ISBN: 9781000623666
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 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
• Index