Occidentalism and the Egyptian Novel - by Lorenzo Casini (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book examines Occidentalism, or the set of cultural, literary and political meanings associated with 'the West', in the works of canonical 20th- 21st-century Egyptian novelists. Beginning with the writings of Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Lorenzo Casini here traces the way that imaginations and representations of the West became bound up with notions of modernity and national identity with which Egyptian novelists grappled, from the works of Tawfiq al-Hakim to those of Taha Husayn. He argues that later novelists such as Yusuf Idris, Fati Ghanim, and Latifa al-Zayyat, reacted to the changing political circumstances in Egypt, from Nasser's rule and the slide to authoritarianism to the 2011 Revolution, to imagine different kinds of Egyptian political community with a more complicated and less binary relationship with the imagined West"--

Book Synopsis

This book examines Occidentalism, or the set of cultural, literary and political uses of 'the West', in the works of canonical 20th and 21st century Egyptian novelists. Beginning with the writings of Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Lorenzo Casini here traces the way that imaginaries and representations of the West became bound up with the notions of modernity and national identity with which Egyptian novelists grappled, from the works of Tawfiq al-Hakim to those of Taha Husayn. The book also explores the trope of the European woman as an embodiment of the free, modern, seductive West as an essential facet of Occidentalism in this formative period.

The second part of the book examines the ways in which later novelists -from Latifa al-Zayyat and Yusuf Idris, to Radwa Ashur and Ahdaf Soueif- subverted dominant Occidentalist themes as a way of re-examining concepts of personal, political, and national identity. The author argues that these later novelists reacted to the changing political circumstances in Egypt, from Nasser's rule and the slide to authoritarianism to the 2011 Revolution, to envisage different kinds of Egyptian political community with a more complicated and less binary relationship with the imagined West.

Review Quotes

A fascinating and insightful exploration of the importance and many uses of the idea of the West in Egyptian literature, and an important contribution to our understanding of Occidentalism.
Alastair Bonnett, Professor of Social Geography, Newcastle University, UK

In this fine study, Lorenzo Casini questions the well-worn oppositions between 'East' and 'West', 'tradition' and 'modernity' to reveal a pattern of Egyptian writers and thinkers - some well-known, others ripe for rediscovery-using the idea of Europe to reflect on their identity. His readings transform the connotations of 'Occidentalism' from a term that implies the servile imitation of imported ideas to a more muscular engagement that raises important questions about language, literature, the state, and society.
Ziad Elmarsafy, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature, University of St Andrews, UK

Timely and Insightful. Occidentalism and the Egyptian Novel is a cogent and original intervention in the debates about the role of the 'West' in the 'Eastern' literary imaginary and modernity. Lorenzo Casini moves the discussions of Egyptian modernisation outside the familiar frames of European influence and Edward Said's Orientalism and refocuses our attention on the representations of the 'West' and 'Western' women in the Egyptian novel. The politics and poetics of the representations of the 'West' in the Egyptian novel, Occidentalism, do not mirror Orientalism, but are nuanced Egyptian responses to cultural encounters in the long 20th century.
Wen-chin Ouyang, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature, SOAS, University of London, UK

About the Author

Lorenzo Casini is Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Messina, Italy. He is the co- author of Fuori degli argini (2003) and Modernità arabe (2012) and the co-editor of Minnena (2020) and Migration in the Making of the Gulf Space (2022).