Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels

Description

This book is the sequel toBritain Through Muslim Eyesand 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. Itargues 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. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxxviii Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 ‘Touch Me, Baby’: Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun (Claire Chambers)....Pages 3-39 ‘I Wanted a Human Touch’: Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album (Claire Chambers)....Pages 41-68 Front Matter ....Pages 69-69 Fiction of Olfaction: Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (Claire Chambers)....Pages 71-120 Taste the Difference: Leila Aboulela, Yasmin Crowther, and Robin Yassin-Kassab (Claire Chambers)....Pages 121-166 Front Matter ....Pages 167-167 Sound and Fury: Tabish Khair’s Just Another Jihadi Jane and Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (Claire Chambers)....Pages 169-211 The Doors of Posthuman Sensory Perception in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (Claire Chambers)....Pages 213-252 Back Matter ....Pages 253-302