Haunting Energies in the Arabic Novel

Charis Olszok is Associate Professor of Modern Arabic Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Newnham College. Her first monograph, The Libyan Novel: Humans, Animals and the Poetics of Vulnerability (EUP, 2020), charted the Libyan novel through its vision of human and nonhuman entanglement. Since then, she has published on ecology, oil and the fantastic in Arabic literature. She has also translated several works of Arabic fiction into English.

• Note on Translation and TransliterationAcknowledgementsPreface: Scope and Argument of the BookIntroduction:Unseen Ecologies in Modern Arabic LiteraturePart I: Re-Energising the Arabic Novel: Landscapes, Intertexts and ghumūḍ (darkness/obscurity)1. Palms behind the Smog: Strange Energies in Mawsim al-hijra ila al-shimal (Season of Migration to the North)2. Tales from the End of a World: The Dark Ecology of Animal Intertextuality in al-Nihayat (Endings)Part II: The Ecological Anti-Epic3. Parasites around Palms: Amnesia and Entropy in the “Wad Hamid Cycle”4. Breaking-Points and Breakdowns: Sickening Minds, Bodies and Lands in Mudun al-milh (Cities of Salt)Part III: Minor Epics of ghumūḍ (darkness/obscurity) and kashf (exposure/revelation)5. The Subterranean Poetics of a Creeping Desert: al-Khusuf’s (The Lunar Eclipse’s) Toxic Sahara6. A Horror that Lurks: Growths, Mutations and Machines in Fuqahaʾ al-zalam (Jurists of Darkness) and Muʿaskarat al-abad (Garrisons of Infinity)Afterword: From Ecological Epic to Gulf War HauntingBibliography