Occidentalism: Literary Representations of the Maghrebi Experience of the East-West Encounter

Description

Explores the encounters between East and West in Maghrebi literature in the pre-1945 periodFocuses on the work of early Algerian intelligentsia known as the Young Algerians and their insistent letters to the OccidentDepicts the Maghrebi encounter with the Occident as a plea to extend Western civilisation to all factions of the colonised societyEngages with the work of early French feminists and its impact on the birth of Algerian feminismIncludes readings of key texts by Chukri Khodja, Saad ben Ali, Djamila Débêche, Fadhma Amrouche, Mouloud Feraoun, Mohamed Dib, Ferhat Abbas and Albert Memmi, amongst many othersMaghrebi literature published in the first half of the twentieth century is a subject that seldom receives focused scholarly treatment. This is partly due to limited availability of the books, some of which were printed in as few as fifty copies. Zahia Smail Salhi tracked down these rare works and put them in the spotlight for the first time here. Through close textual analysis and in-depth engagement with religious and socio-political contexts, Smail Salhi determines whether these texts belong to a collective formation we may call ‘Occidentalism’. In so doing, this book reintegrates the pre-1945 Maghrebi novels into the history and study of modern Arabic literature.