Islamophobia and the Novel

Islamophobia and the Novel analyzes how recent works of fiction have framed and responded to the rise of anti-Muslim prejudice alongside changing concepts of cultural difference. Peter Morey offers readings of novels by John Updike, Ian McEwan, Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali, Mohsin Hamid, John le Carré, and other writers, showing how their portrayal of difference both reflects and refutes the ideological preoccupations of politicians and the media in the post-9/11 West.

Islamophobia and the Novel discusses novels embodying a range of positions: from the avowedly secular to the religious; and from texts that appear to underwrite Western assumptions of cultural superiority to those that recognize and critique neoimperial impulses. Morey also analyzes the “misery memoirs” of Khaled Hosseini and Azar Nafisi and how they relate the Muslim world to a Western audience. He considers how literary depictions of Muslim experience have challenged liberal assumptions regarding the novel’s potential for empathy and its ability to encompass a variety of voices. Morey argues for a greater degree of critical self-consciousness in our understanding of writing by and about Muslims. Contemporary literature’s capacity to unveil the conflicted nature of anti-Muslim bigotry expands our range of resources to combat Islamophobia. This, in turn, might contribute to Islamophobia’s eventual dismantling.

Peter Morey is professor of twentieth-century English literature at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Fictions of India: Narrative and Power (2000) and Rohinton Mistry (2004) and coauthor of Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11 (2011).