New Books in Literary Studies

The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice(Edinburgh UP,2021), by Huda Fakhreddine, examines one of the most controversial poetic forms in Arabic: the Arabic prose poem. When the modernist movement in Arabic poetry was launched in the 1940s, it threatened to blur the distinctions between poetry and everything else. The Arabic prose poem is probably the most subversive and extreme manifestation of this blurring, often described as an oxymoron, a non-genre, an anti-genre, a miracle and even a conspiracy. This ‘new genre’ is here explored as a poetic practice and as a critical lens which gave rise to a profound, contentious and continuing debate about the definition of an Arabic poem, its limits, and its relation to its readers. Huda Fakhreddine, Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, examines the history of the prose poem, its claims of autonomy and distance from its socio-political context, and the anxiety and scandal it generated. Miguel Monteiro is a PhD Student in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

TheRāmāyaṇaof Vālmīki, the monumental Sanskrit epic of the life of Rama, ideal man and incarnation of the great god Visnu, has profoundly affected the literature, art, religions, and cultures of South and Southeast Asia from antiquity to the present. Filled with thrilling battles, flying monkeys, and ten-headed demons, the work, composed almost 3,000 years ago, recounts Prince Rama’s exile and his odyssey to recover his abducted wife, Sita, and establish a utopian kingdom. Now, the definitive English translation of the critical edition of this classic is available inThe Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: The Complete English Translation(Princeton UP, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

How does the past live on within our experience of the present? And how does our decision to speak about or write down our recollections of how things were change our understanding of those memories--how does it change us in the present? Asking those questions back in 2019 broughtRTBinto the company of memory-obsessed writers like Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust. Discussing autofiction by Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti and Karl Ove Knausgaard, John and Elizabeth begin to understand that the line between real-life fact, memory, and fiction is not quite as sharp as we had thought. JoiningRecall This Bookfor this conversation is philosopherHelena De Bres, author of influential articles including “The Many, not the Few: Pluralism about Global Distributive Justice”, “Justice in Transnational Governance”, “What’s Special About the State?” “Local Food: The Moral Case” and most recently "Narrative and Meaning in Life". (Herwebsitecontains links to her many fine articles for fellow philosophers and for the general public). She has recently begun to work on moral philosophy, especially the question of what makes a life meaningful, and on philosophy of art. John ranks his favorite anthropologists, while Elizabeth wonders whether autofiction necessarily takes on the affect of an academic department meeting--and what that affect has to do with Kazuo Ishiguro. Discussed in this episode: "A Sketch of the Past," Virginia Woolf "Finding Innocence and Experience: Voices in Memoir," Sue William Silverman TheOutlineTrilogy, Rachel Cusk My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgaard How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life, Sheila Heti An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro The Moth The Day of Shelly's Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief, Renato Rosaldo Memoir: An Introduction, G. Thomas Couser The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell Or Orwell: Writing and Democratic Socialism, Alex Woloch Listen andReadHere Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Indigenous knowledge of local ecosystems often challenges settler-colonial cosmologies that naturalize resource extraction and the relocation of nomadic, hunting, foraging, or fishing peoples.Questioning Borders: Ecoliteratures of China and Taiwan(Columbia UP, 2023) explores recent ecoliterature by Han and non-Han Indigenous writers of China and Taiwan, analyzing relations among humans, animals, ecosystems, and the cosmos in search of alternative possibilities for creativity and consciousness. Informed by extensive field research, Robin Visser compares literary works by Bai, Bunun, Kazakh, Mongol, Tao, Tibetan, Uyghur, Wa, Yi, and Han Chinese writers set in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Southwest China, and Taiwan, sites of extensive development, migration, and climate change impacts. Visser contrasts the dominant Han Chinese cosmology of center and periphery that informs what she calls “Beijing Westerns” with Indigenous and hybridized ways of relating to the world that challenge borders, binaries, and hierarchies. By centering Indigenous cosmologies, this book aims to decolonize approaches to ecocriticism, comparative literature, and Chinese and Sinophone studies as well as to inspire new modes of sustainable flourishing in the Anthropocene. Robin Visseris professor and associate chair of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author ofCities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China(2010). Li-Ping Chenis a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

An intellectual who hated intellectuals, a socialist who didn't trust the state--our foremost political essayist and author ofAnimal FarmandNineteen Eighty-Fourwas a man of stark, puzzling contradictions. Knowing Orwell's life and reading Orwell's works produces just as many questions as it answers. Celebrated Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor guides fans and new readers alike through the many twists and turns of Orwell's books, life and thought. As a writer he intended his works to be transparent and instantly accessible, yet they are also full of secrets and surprises, tantalising private histories, and psychological quirks. From his conflicted relationship with religion to his competing anti-imperialism and fascination with empire,Who Is Big Brother?: A Reader's Guide to George Orwell(Yale UP, 2024) delves into the complex development of this essential yet enigmatic voice. Taylor leads us through Orwell's principal writings and complex life--crafting an illuminating guide to one of the most enduringly relevant writers in the English language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Cathy Yue Wang'sSnake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy(Wayne State University Press, 2023)examines the processes by which modern authors and filmmakers reshape these traditional tales to develop new narratives that interrogate the ingrained patriarchal paradigm. Through a rigorous analysis, Wang delineates changes in both content and narrative that allow contemporary interpretations to reimagine the gender politics and contexts of the tales retold. With a broad transmedia approach and a nuanced understanding of intertextuality, this work contributes to the ongoing negotiation in academic and popular discourse between past and present, traditional and contemporary, and text and reality in a globalized and postmodern world.Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughtersoffers an engaging interdisciplinary investigation of issues at the heart of these traditional tales such as gender and status hierarchy, marriage and family life, and in-group/out-group distinction. Beyond the content of these individual stories, Wang ties these narratives together across time using cognitive literary criticism, especially affective narratology, to shed new light on the adaptation of literary and cultural texts and their sociopolitical contexts. Dr. Cathy Yue Wang is a lecturer in Department of Chinese Language and Literature, School of Humanities, Shanghai Normal University in China. She received her PhD from Macquarie University in Australia. She is particularly interested in applying feminist and queer perspectives into examinations of adaptation and retelling, children and young adult literature, as well as boys’ love subculture and fandom in the East Asian context. She is the author ofSnake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy(Wayne State University Press, 2023) and editor ofCatching Chen Qing Ling: The Untamed and Adaptation, Production, and Reception in Transcultural Contexts(Peter Lang, forthcoming). Linshan Jiang is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she also obtained a Ph.D. emphasis in Translation Studies. Her research interests include modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Through an original framework of literary sensory studies,Sensing the Sinophone: Urban Memoryscapes in Contemporary Fiction(Cambria, 2022)provides a comparative analysis of how six contemporary works of Sinophone fiction reimagine the links between the self and the city, the past and the present, as well as the physical and the imaginary. It explores the connection between elusive memories and material cityscapes through the matrix of the senses. Joining recent efforts to imagine world literature beyond the international, this monograph engages in a triangular comparison of fiction from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taipei – three Sinophone cities, each with its own strong urban identity that comes with unique cultural and linguistic hybridities. Sensing the Sinophonecombines narratological tools for studying time in fiction with critical concepts of spatiality in order to establish an analytical focus on narrative voice and reliability (including the inaccuracy of memory), structural non-linearity (such as mental time travel), and the construction of fictional parallel cities as loci for plot development. In this study, the conventional sensorium and its role in recollection is explored and amplified to include whole-body sensations, habitual synesthesia, and the emotional aspects of sensations that produce a sense of place or self. Astrid Møller-Olsen is an international research fellow with Lund University (Sweden), University of Stavanger (Norway), and University of Oxford (United Kingdom); her position is funded by the Swedish Research Council. Dr. Møller-Olsen holds an MA in comparative literature and a PhD in Chinese studies. Her research has been published inModern Chinese Literature and Culture,SFRA Review,Canadian Review of Comparative Literature,Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, andInternational Journal of Heritage Studies. She hosts the podcastSinophone Unrealitiesand the literary blogxiaoshuo.blog. Tong He is a Lecturer in English at Central China Normal University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Written by iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, this classic of love, desire, and family breakdown smashed through taboos when first published in Arabic and continues to captivate audiences today It is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. Despite all the excitement of the wedding preparations, Amina is not looking forward to her nuptials. And it is not because of the age gap or because of the fact that she does not love, or even really know, her fiancé. No, it is because she is involved with another man. This other man is Dr Hashim Abdel-Latif, and while he is Amina’s first love, she is certainly not his. Also many years her senior, Hashim is well-known in polite circles for his adventures with women.A Nose and Three Eyestells the story of Amina’s love affair with Hashim, and that of two other young women: Nagwa and Rahhab. A Nose and Three Eyes is a story of female desire and sexual awakening, of love and infatuation, and of exploitation and despair. It quietly critiques the strictures put upon women by conservative social norms and expectations, while a subtle undercurrent of political censure was carefully aimed at the then Nasser regime. As such, it was both deeply controversial and wildly popular when first published in the 1960s. Still a household name, this novel, and its author, have stood the test of time and remain relevant and highly readable today. Ihsan Abdel Kouddous (Author, 1919–1990) is one of the most prolific and popular writers of Arabic fiction of the twentieth century. Born in Cairo, Egypt, Abdel Kouddous graduated from law school in 1942 but left his law practice to pursue a long and successful career in journalism. He was an editor at the daily Al-Akhbar and the weekly Rose al-Yusuf, and was editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram. The author of dozens of books, his controversial writings and political views landed him in jail more than once. A Nose and Three Eyes is his second book to be translated into English, and his first was I Do Not Sleep. Hanan al-Shaykh (Foreword by) was born and raised in Beirut. She is the author of The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand and Myrrh, Beirut Blues, and Only in London, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She lives in London. Jonathan Smolin (Translated by) is the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies at Dartmouth College in the US. He is the translator of several works of Arabic fiction, including Whitefly by Abdelilah Hamdouchi, A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me by Youssef Fadel, and I Do Not Sleep and A Nose and Three Eyes by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and the author of The Politics of Melodrama: The Cultural and Political Lives of Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and Gamal Abdel Nasser (forthcoming Stanford University Press). He lives in Hanover, NH. Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Adam Kabat’sThe River Imp and the Stinky Jewel and Other Tales: Monster Comics from Edo Japan(Columbia UP, 2023) is an in-depth introduction to the rich and ribald world ofkibyōshi, a short-lived (1778-1807) subgenre of books combining text and illustration on the same page, much like comic books and manga today. This book presents a selection of fivekibyōshiin which monsters play central roles. Each of these short books is reproduced in its entirety, accompanied by Kabat’s translations and commentary. Kabat’s selection of tales communicates the entertainment value and thematic variety of these stories, as well as their deep web of interconnections with contemporary culture and the urban economy. The book will be of interest not only to scholars of premodern history and literature, but also to a larger audience including the growing ranks of manga and anime fans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

This book analyses the way that changes in the comics industry, book trade and webcomics distribution have shaped the publication of long-form comics.The US Graphic Novel(Edinburgh UP, 2022)pays particular attention to how the concept of the graphic novel developed through the twentieth century. Art historians, journalists, and reviewers debated whether it was possible for a comic to be a novel – debates that accelerated after the term ’graphic novel’ was coined by the comics fan Richard Kyle in 1964. This study underlines the proximity of the graphic novel to other media, showing that this cultural form is not only the meeting place between periodical comics and books, but that graphic novels are in dialogue with films, posters and computer screens. Dr. Paul Williamsis an Associate Professor of Twentieth-Century literature and culture at the University of Exeter in the UK. His research is centrally concerned with comics and graphic novels. His monographDreaming the Graphic Novelbroke new ground by explaining how graphic novels were published, circulated, and discussed in North America between the mid-1960s and 1980. Dr. Williams has also co-curated the exhibitionThe Great British Graphic Novelat the Cartoon Museum in London, which was visited by over 10,000 people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies