Forty per cent of the 89.3 million displaced people in the world are Arabs, displaced inside their own countries and abroad.
This book examines Arabic literature produced by and about migrants, refugees and other displaced people with a particular focus on the period from the First Gulf War (1990) to the present day. It is based on various research strategies, including comparative, historical, theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches in order to identify the specifics of the interconnected poetics, genres (or genre-defying features) and themes of the analyzed works, as well as the dominant trends across these literary developments. Special attention is paid to:
- The relationship between literature produced in countries of origin and countries of asylum
- The representation of "states of exception", for example, refugees in the context of street/camp life
- The contribution of migration literature to human rights discourses and their contestation
- Mapping geographies of migration literature: Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, etc.
- Linguistic choice and aesthetic challenges in poetry, prose and drama
- Formal experimentation and transformations/crossings of genres (novel and life writing; poetry; drama and performative arts)
- The quest for identity and generational conflict in narratives (novels, short stories, memoirs, etc.)
- Comparative approaches within Arabic literary production and/ or with other migrant writings
- Debates regarding the term "Refugee literature" in the Arab field, where this definition is discussed, criticized.
- How writers articulate the divergences and convergences between the experiences of women and men in exile.
