1:00-2:15   MW   WH 005
Above section carries AHLA and Cultural Studies Credits and
Intensive Writing

The Arabic Novel will take as its core novel the Egyptian Nobel
laureate Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk, which provides an intimate view
of the traditional life of a Cairene mercantile family in the early
20th century. It will then explore such works as Sudanese author
al-Tayyib Saleh's Season of Migration to the North, which treats the
jarring political and psychological displacement of a Sudanese
migrating to London, then back to the Sudan; the Israeli Arab Emile
Habibi's Pessoptimist, the tragi-comic novel of life under Israeli
rule; Lebanese Hanan al-Sheikh's Story of Zahra, which portrays the
violent coming of age of a hapless girl during the Lebanese civil war.
Beyond the Arab world, the course will look at works such as Tanzanian
author Abd al-Rahman Gurnah's Paradise, a poignant coming-of-age novel
set in colonial East Africa; Neustadt Award winner Nuruddin Farah's
Close Sesame, set in post-colonial Somalia under Marxist dictatorship;
Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, on the birth
of modern India/Pakistan; and Milton Hattoum's Tree of the Seventh
Heaven, a lusophone novel about the Syro-Lebanese diaspora in Brazil.

Individual projects will allow students to pursue their own interests
in areas such as the women novelists, the war novel, the postcolonial
novel, the Arab-American novel, etc.

All required readings are in English.