Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels [electronic resource] /
Chambers, Claire.author.
This book is the sequel to Britain Through Muslim Eyes and examines contemporary novelistic representations of and by Muslims in Britain. It builds on studies of the five senses and ‘sensuous geographies’ of postcolonial Britain, and charts the development since 1988 of a fascinating and important body of fiction by Muslim-identified authors. It is a selective literary history, exploring case-study novelistic representations of and by Muslims in Britain to allow in-depth critical analysis through the lens of sensory criticism. It argues that, for authors of Muslim heritage in Britain, writing the senses is often a double-edged act of protest. Some of the key authors excoriate a suppression or cover-up of non-heteronormativity and women’s rights that sometimes occurs in Muslim communities. Yet their protest is especially directed at secular culture’s ocularcentrism and at successive British governments’ efforts to surveil, control, and suppress Muslim bodies.
1. ‘Touch Me, Baby’: Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun -- 2. ‘I Wanted a Human Touch’: Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album -- 3. Fiction of Olfaction: Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane -- 4. Taste the Difference: Leila Aboulela, Yasmin Crowther, and Robin Yassin-Kassab -- 5. Sound and Fury: Tabish Khair’s Just Another Jihadi Jane and Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire -- 6. The Doors of Posthuman Sensory Perception in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West.
This book is the sequel to Britain Through Muslim Eyes and examines contemporary novelistic representations of and by Muslims in Britain. It builds on studies of the five senses and ‘sensuous geographies’ of postcolonial Britain, and charts the development since 1988 of a fascinating and important body of fiction by Muslim-identified authors. It is a selective literary history, exploring case-study novelistic representations of and by Muslims in Britain to allow in-depth critical analysis through the lens of sensory criticism. It argues that, for authors of Muslim heritage in Britain, writing the senses is often a double-edged act of protest. Some of the key authors excoriate a suppression or cover-up of non-heteronormativity and women’s rights that sometimes occurs in Muslim communities. Yet their protest is especially directed at secular culture’s ocularcentrism and at successive British governments’ efforts to surveil, control, and suppress Muslim bodies.
Literature   .
British literature.
Oriental literature.
Literature, Modern-20th century.
Fiction.
Postcolonial/World Literature.
British and Irish Literature.
Asian Literature.
Contemporary Literature.
Twentieth-Century Literature.
Fiction.