Specters of World Literature

Karim Mattar is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a transdisciplinary humanist, and his research and teaching interests are focused around world literature, the history of the novel, the Middle East, the Israel / Palestine conflict, and critical theory. With Anna Ball, he is the co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).

• PrefaceIntroduction: Towards a Spectral Theory of World LiteraturePart I: The Worlding of "Literature" in the Middle East1. The Shabaḥ of Modernity: World-Systems, the Petro-Imperium, and the Indigenous Trace2. A Genealogy of Adab in the Comparative Middle EastPart II: The Middle Eastern Novel and the Spectral Life-World of Modernity3. The Revolution of Form: Naguib Mahfouz from the Suez Crisis to the Arab Spring4. Islam and the Limits of Translation: Orhan Pamuk and the Ottoman Revival5. Women in the Literary Marketplace: The Anglophone Iranian Novel and the Feminist SubjectConclusion: Futures of SpectralityBibliographyIndex

[...] contains some brilliant insights and syntheses. It is thus essential reading for both world literature and Middle Eastern literature students.