Hydrofictions - by Hannah Boast (Paperback)

About the Book

This book identifies water as a crucial new topic of literary and cultural analysis at a critical moment for the world's water resources, focusing on the urgent context of Israel/Palestine.

Book Synopsis

Water is a major global issue that will shape our future. Rarely, however, has water been the subject of literary critical attention. This book identifies water as a crucial new topic of literary and cultural analysis at a critical moment for the world's water resources, focusing on the urgent context of Israel/Palestine. It argues for the necessity of recognising water's vital importance in understanding contemporary Israeli and Palestinian literature, showing that water is as culturally significant as that much more obvious object of nationalist attention, the land. In doing so, it offers new insights into Israeli and Palestinian literature and politics, and into the role of culture in an age of environmental crisis. Hydrofictions shows that how we imagine water is inseparable from how we manage it. This book is urgent and necessary reading for students and scholars in Middle East Studies, postcolonial ecocriticism, the environmental humanities and anyone invested in the future of the world's water.

From the Back Cover

Places water at the centre of a new approach to literary criticism Water is a major global issue that will shape our future. Rarely, however, has water been the subject of literary critical attention. This book identifies water as a crucial new topic of literary and cultural analysis at a critical moment for the world's water resources, focusing on the urgent context of Israel/Palestine. It argues for the necessity of recognising water's vital importance in understanding contemporary Israeli and Palestinian literature, showing that water is as culturally significant as that much more obvious object of nationalist attention, the land. In doing so, it offers new insights into Israeli and Palestinian literature and politics, and into the role of culture in an age of environmental crisis. Hydrofictions shows that how we imagine water is inseparable from how we manage it. This book is urgent and necessary reading for students and scholars in Middle East Studies, postcolonial ecocriticism, the environmental humanities and anyone invested in the future of the world's water. Key features - Contributes to debates within literary studies on the environmental humanities, national literatures and 'cli-fi' - Brings together approaches from literary studies, cultural geography and world politics - Adds a new ecocritical dimension to scholarship on Israeli and Palestinian literature - Introduces the concept of 'hydrofictions' as a new way of analysing literature and resource politics - Covers a broad range of contemporary Israeli and Palestinian authors including Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Sayed Kashua, Amos Oz and Meir Shalev Hannah Boast is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick.

Review Quotes

[...] one can easily envision this book, especially the introduction and chapter on Meir Shalev, inspiring future environmental-humanistic scholarship of Middle Eastern literatures.--Rachel Green "MIDDLE EASTERN LITERATURES"

Hannah Boast's Hydrofictions: Water, power, and politics in Israeli and Palestinian literature is a forceful book that foregrounds water in a settler-colonial context where scholarship is focused almost exclusively on land.--Muna Dajani "Journal of Palestine Studies"

If the method allows analysis as refreshing as in this case of Palestinian-Israeli water conflict, then all water researchers are urged to read the book and continue the quest.--Mark Zeitoun "Water Alternatives"

This highly original monograph will be field-defining in both environmental humanities and postcolonial studies. Analysis of literary representations of water in postcolonial literature has often been neglected in contrast to representations of land, and this book makes a crucial intervention in redressing that marginalization and constructing new theoretical frameworks through which to understand literary mediations of water conflict. At the same time, the book's comparative analysis of Israeli and Palestinian "hydrofiction" offers a vital new understanding of the dynamics of hydro-apartheid, hydro-colonialism, and infrastructural violence, while bringing less familiar, but valuable, texts to light.-- "Dr. Sharae Deckard, University College Dublin"

Turning to Israel/Palestine as a case study, Hydrofictions [...] makes a compelling case for the role of literary fiction and cultural representations as a means to discern the complex interplay between hydrosocial relations and hydropolitical regimes. As a potentially foundational entry in an emerging hydro-humanities, Hydrofictions is a must read.--Matthew Henry "Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture"

With the publication of Hydrofictions, Hannah Boast spearheads critical innovation in a region often overlooked in postcolonial studies. [...] This leads to novel and unexpected ways of confronting what can be a daunting corpus.--Michael W. Pritchard "Postcolonial Text"

About the Author

Hannah Boast is Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow at University College Dublin, and was previously Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University of Warwick