The Kaleidoscope of Gendered Memory in Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Novels

Product Description


Through its unique kaleidoscopic lens, this book analyzes the work of Algerias first postcolonial woman writer to publish a novel in Arabic, Ahlam Mosteghanemi. Her novels Memory in the Flesh and Chaos of the Senses return to the trauma of the Algerian War of Independence to address the lingering anxieties of national belonging and memory in postcolonial Algeria at a time when the nation is caught between two forces: entrenched bureaucratic-political elites and populist Islamists, who imagine a return to a pre-modern, utopian past. This book argues that Mosteghanemis polyphonic narratives reveal that national narratives are always multipleunity is not one, all-encompassing narrative, but instead an ever-evolving Bakhtinian dialogism accommodating multiple perspectives, memories, and stories. The study interprets Mosteghanemis metaphor of the bridge as a powerful device for exploring tensions between reality and imagination, exile and belonging, and traditional concepts of gender in ways that reimagine nationhood and gesture towards a new, collective future.


About the Author


Nuha Ahmad Baaqeel is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Postcolonial Studies. She is currently Deputy Head of the Department of Languages and Translations at Taibah University, Saudi Arabia. She holds a PhD in Postcolonial Literature from the University of Sussex, UK, an MA in Comparative Literary Studies and Criticism from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA in English Literature from King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia. She has published scholarly journal articles on postcolonial literature, and has previously worked as an English teacher at several schools and colleges in Saudi Arabia, and as a Lecturer in English Literature at Taibah University, Saudi Arabia.