Ageing in the Modern Arabic Novel

Samira Aghacy is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and interim Director of the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World at the Lebanese American University. She is author of Masculine Identity in the Fiction of Arab East since 1967 (2009), and has published numerous articles on contemporary Arabic fiction. She also served for seven years (1997-2003) as editor of Al-Raida, a feminist peer-reviewed journal published by IWSAW.

• Introduction; 1. Ageing in Traditional Neighborhoods: Conformity and Transgression; 2. Hoary Monuments, Residual Bodies: Senescence in the City; 3. Menopausal Tremors: Refurbishing the Body; 4. Senile Masculinity: The Male Body in Crisis; 5. Yarns of Later Life: Transgressive Strategies; Conclusion; Bibliography.

The book’s forte, I believe, lies in its attempt and success to counter ageism in literary studies, and move elderly men and women from the margins of literary representation to the centre of critical attention. In this sense, Samira Aghacy’s Ageing in the Modern Arabic Novel offers an original piece of serious research, providing a research model, and inviting an extension of this scholarship across generic boundaries, and into a wider spectrum of the MENA region, in literary studies and beyond.