Female Voices and Egyptian Independence - by Rania M Mahmoud

About the Book

"This book offers a nuanced analysis of the ways in which Egyptian and British novels represent the Egyptian nationalist project in its struggle against British hegemony in the aftermath of two revolutions: the 1881-82 Urabi Revolution, known for inaugurating the British occupation of Egypt, and the 1919 Revolution celebrated in Egyptian national memory as the classic Egyptian revolution par excellence. Reading the novels against the grain, the study recovers female voices that are multiply marginalized, due to their gender and/or ethnicity, whether by colonial imperial powers, the nation, their immediate regional community or, finally, by the works under discussion themselves. Using a comparative lens, the study foregrounds the ways in which the authors confirm, critique, rewrite/revise, or reject developmental narratives. Paying particular attention to women that range from the uneducated black slave (a topic seldom discussed in Arabic literary studies), to the uneducated rural Siwan woman with artistic talent (Bahaa Taher's Sunset Oasis, 2009), to the wealthy cultured Coptic housewife (Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell), to the rising late nineteenth-century British female professional (The Guns of El Kebir by Jon Wilcox), and finally to the eclipsed twentieth-century Egyptian female national intellectual (Naguib Mahfouz's Sugar Street, 1992), all of whom play crucial roles in the journeys of the respective male protagonists, and by extension, the Egyptian national project"--

Book Synopsis

This book offers a nuanced analysis of the ways in which Egyptian and British novels represent the Egyptian nationalist project in its struggle against British hegemony in the aftermath of two revolutions: the 1881-82 Urabi Revolution, known for inaugurating the British occupation of Egypt, and the 1919 Revolution celebrated in Egyptian national memory as the classic Egyptian revolution par excellence. Reading the novels against the grain, the study recovers female voices that are multiply marginalized, due to their gender and/or ethnicity, whether by colonial imperial powers, the nation, their immediate regional community or, finally, by the works under discussion themselves. Using a comparative lens, the study foregrounds the ways in which the authors confirm, critique, rewrite/revise, or reject developmental narratives. Female Voices and Egyptian Independence pays particular attention to women that range from the uneducated black slave, to the uneducated rural Siwan woman with artistic talent, to the wealthy cultured Coptic housewife, to the rising late nineteenth-century British female professional, and finally to the eclipsed twentieth-century Egyptian female national intellectual, all of whom play crucial roles in the journeys of the respective male protagonists, and by extension, the Egyptian national project.

Review Quotes

Female Voices and Egyptian Independence provides a fascinating account of how British and Egyptian authors looked to creatively imagine marginalized voices in the context of colonial Egypt. Rich in contextual and historical detail, the book engagingly contends with the experience and aftermath of revolutionary culture.
Anastasia Valassopoulos, University of Manchester, UK.

Rania Mahmoud offers an astute analysis of marginalized female characters in four seminal Arab and English novels. Her systematic reading uncovers hitherto under-evaluated voices, highlights their importance to the general architecture of the literary works, and convincingly manages to give them more space. A stimulating novel interpretation, with insightful discussions of the genre of the bildungsroman.
Dina Heshmat, Associate Professor, The American University in Cairo, Egypt.

This engaging book seamlessly draws on the literary, the historical, and the political to empower silenced female voices in classical and contemporary fiction. Skillfully, Rania M. Mahmoud reconstructs fragmented narratives and provides fascinating insights into complex human responses to colonial violence and the exclusion built into the nation-building project in modern Egypt.
Hussam R. Ahmed, Professor, Carleton University, Canada.

About the Author

Rania M. Mahmoud is Assistant Professor, Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Arkansas, USA. Her writing has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Gender & History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle Eastern Literatures and Arab Studies Quarterly.