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In rendering Homi Bhabha’s concept of the unhomely, or “the estranging sense of the relocation of the home and the world—the unhomeliness—that is the condition of extra-territorial and cross-cultural initiations,” through the sounds and daily events of a young girl’s life, Jhumpa Lahiri exposes a particular formation of unhomeliness inherent to diasporic experience.
Kathy Acker’s infamous novel includes a section titled “The Persian Poems,” which pairs words written in Farsi alongside their translations in English. What has largely gone unrecognized is that Acker has deliberately mistranslated specific words, bringing an entirely new meaning to this passage, Acker’s craft, and the reader’s internalization of power.
Alongside his exoneration of colonial violence both externally apparent and pervasively overlooked, Dambudzo Marechera questions what will happen when independence comes, throwing into stark relief the metanarrative of the nation state and the concept of nationalism as a motivating structure for freedom.
In her satirical critique of the patriarchy in which she imagines a new, feminist society, Hossain’s 1905 short story “Sultana’s Dream” alludes to some of the most pressing contemporary global crises—epidemic disease, human displacement, overdependence on non-renewable energy, militarization of local police forces and the carceral mindset.
In Alawiya Sobh’s 2002 novel, the writer has disappeared. Through the perplexing enigma of the novel’s authorship, Sobh simultaneously brings to light and challenges the erasure of war and conflict.
As panopticon-like tactics of controlling certain populations become increasingly widespread, Abdel Aziz’s debut novel gives us a peek into the authoritarian future to which such surveillance could lead. Within the tyrannical panopticity, she insists on the power of visibility as double-edged tool of oppression and revolution.
Jokha Alharthi’s novel is the first book by an Arab author to win the Man Booker International Prize. In it, Alharthi crafts a stunning rumination on love, responsibility, feminism, and freedom, as well as the unavoidably sour ramifications of the accompanying disappointment and betrayal.
Despite the trouble and humiliation Ibrahim endured as a political prisoner and later as a writer in attempting to publish his work, the timeless value of his lessons is undeniable: the impositions of decency and social and literary norms often serve only to exacerbate the problems they claim to denounce.
Writing within the form of the novel yet against its western traditions, Bhattacharya’s presence in the international English literary sphere beckons the reader to look closer into the chaos.
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