Writing and Muslim Identity: Representations of Islam in German and English Transcultural Literature, 1990-2006

Frauke Matthes (Author)

Published in association with: Institute of Modern Languages Research

Writing and Muslim Identity is a comparative study of Islam in contemporary German- and English-language literature. At a time when the non-Islamic world seems to be defining itself increasingly in contrast to the Islamic world, this literary exploration of Islam-related issues sheds new and valuable light on the cultural interaction between the Muslim world and ‘the West’. Writing and Muslim Identity engages with literary representations of different versions of Islam and asks how travel and migration, the transcultural experiences of migrant and post-migrant Muslims, may have shaped the Islams encountered in today’s Germany and Britain. With its comparative approach to ‘cultural translations’ as creative and challenging interactions between cultures that are constantly in flux, the study develops methods of engaging with notions of home and movement, gender and language, all of which may shape a (post-)migrant’s transcultural experience. The book also offers a complex understanding of transcultural writing in relation to ‘traditional’ (Anglophone) as well as ‘marginal’ (German) postcoloniality.
Frauke Matthes is Lecturer in German at the University of Edinburgh.

Contents

Abbreviations and Textual Notes

Introduction: Islam and Transcultural Literature

Moving with Islam

Islam, Migration and Home: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane

Travelling to Islam

Pilgrimage and Hajj: V. S. Naipaul’s Among the Believersand Beyond Belief, and Ilija Trojanow’s Zu den Heiligen Quellen des Islam

Islam, ‘Difference’ and Masculinity

Male Perspectives from the ‘Margins of Society’: Feridun Zaimoğlu’s Kanak Sprak and Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album

Islam, Writing and Femininity

Female Perspectives from the ‘Margins of Society’: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s MutterZunge, Feridun Zaimoğlu’s Koppstoff, and Leila Aboulela’s The Translator and Minaret

Conclusion: Islam and its Audience

Bibliography

Paperback: 9780854572311 / 268 pages / mm x mm