Description
Book SynopsisAlthough Sufi characters - saints, dervishes, wanderers - occur regularly in modern Arabic literature, a select group of novelists seeks to interrogate Sufism as a system of thought and language. In the work of writers like Naguib Mahfouz, Gamal Al-Ghitany, Tahar Ouettar, Ibrahim Al-Koni, Mahmud Al-Mas''adi and Tayeb Salih we see a strong intertextual relationship with the Sufi masters of the past, including Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Al-Niffari and Al-Suhrawardi. This relationship becomes a means of interrogating the limits of the creative self, individuality, rationality and the manifold possibilities offered by literature, seeking in a dialogue with the mystical heritage a way of preserving a self under siege from the overwhelming forces of oppression and reaction that have characterized the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Table of ContentsAbbreviations; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Ouverture; Chapter One: Naguib Mahfouz: (En)chanting Justice; Chapter Two: Tayeb Salih: The Returns of the Saint; Chapter Three: Al-Mas'adi: Witnessing Immortality; Chapter Four: The Survival of Gamal Al-Ghitany; Chapter Five: Ibrahim Al-Koni: Writing and Sacrifice; Chapter Six: Tahar Ouettar: The Saint and the Nightmare of History; Epilogue: Bahaa Taher, Solidarity and Idealism; Bibliography.
