Lexington Books
Pages: 246
•
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7391-1878-8 • Hardback • August 2009 • $128.00 • (£98.00)
978-0-7391-1879-5 • Paperback • December 2010 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
978-0-7391-3838-0 • eBook • August 2009 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
F. Elizabeth Dahab is professor of comparative literature at California State University, Long Beach
Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Odyssey of Québécois/Canadian Arabic Writers and Writing
Chapter 2
Chapter 2: Deprivation and Despair in Saad Elkhadem's Wings of Lead, The Plague, Trilogy of the Flying Egyptian, and One Night in Cairo
Chapter 3
Chapter 3: From Baghdad to Montréal via Paris: Naim Kattan and His Multiple Reality
Chapter 4
Chapter 4: Of Suffocated Minds and Tortured Hearts: The Universe of Abla Farhoud
Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Of Broken Promises and Mended Lives: The War?Torn World of Wajdi Mouawad
Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Fragments and Enigmas: Hédi Bouraoui and La Femme d'entre les lignes
Chapter 7 Conclusion
Voices of Exile is a ground-breaking study of Arab-Canadian writing and opens up a new, exciting arena in Canadian literary studies. Elizabeth Dahab's pioneering work highlights the history of Arab immigrants' contribution to the literary map of Canada....
— Nasrin Rahimieh, University of California, Irvine
F. Elizabeth Dahab has written an informative, ambitious book which should serve as an admirable introduction to works of the 'other' Canadians, writers of North African and Middle Eastern origin who have produced a burgeoning literature in French, English, or Arabic . . . This book is warmly recommended as an introduction to a group of writers who are symptomatic of a global, universalizing potential which is usually inadequately recognized in Canada.
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Dahab's choice of writers provides diversity in genres, topics and expression. The volume is marked by solid research and analysis. Recommended.....
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The originality of this monograph resides in the bringing together of corpuses traditionally thought of as distinct. . . . Elizabeth Dahab's work also has the merit of underscoring points of convergence. . . . Dahab's work makes us rethink our notions ofbelonging —, those places in which are inscribed works that are not only far from being marginal but also beg important questions related to identity and literary filiations....
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In this compelling study, Professor F. Elizabeth Dahab explores the works of five Canadian writers, all of whom come from the Arab world. Her analysis forcefully brings out the impact of exile, whether it was chosen or forced, on their writing. Displacement leads to a specific relationship to words, the ultimate locus of reterritorialization, when both space and past are irremediably lost. These writers thus interweave the echoes of their histories within modern Canadian literature, inscribing it with their own marks. Such a book has been long awaited. It undoubtedly opens new perspectives...
— Cécile Oumhani, assistant professor, University of Paris XII; author of Le café d'Yllka
...The wide array of forms and genre examined in Dahab's study moves between - poetry, novels, short stories and plays - itself forms a sustained theme in her analysis, bringing into focus the challenge to traditional delineations of genre and literary form posed by several of these Arabic-Canadian writers.
— Reviews in Cultural Theory
Dahab's Voices of Exile in Contemporary Canadian Francophone Literature is an absolute must read for anyone wanting either to conduct research or to teach a course on the long-neglected area of writers of Arab descent, particularly those living in exile in Canada. Her eminently readable approach to analyzing the works of Farhoud, Mouawad, Kattan, Bouraoui, and Elkhadem makes her contribution to the field of comparative literary studies and Canadian studies accessible to all. indeed, Dahab has achieved her goal of developing a framework for the canonization of the literature of Franco-Canadian writers of Arabic origin by carefully situating and including an Anglo-Canadian writer of Arabic origin into the mix.
— American Review Of Canadian Studies