ARAB 434 Modern Arabic Literature in Translation

The Arab World has experienced intense political and economic upheaval during the past century, which has led to fundamental changes in social structures and relationships. Imaginative literature has not only been a site for the exploration of these sorts of questions, but has embodied in its very being many of the dilemmas that these questions make manifest. In this course, we will examine novels by writers from across the Arab world. The literature we will be studying has arisen out of various conflicts in the region as well as the lived experiences and dynamic changes to indigenous and cosmopolitan ways of life in the region, but each work creates a world of its own. The strategies novelists use for this world-making will be the focus of our study.  LA, BN.