Middle Eastern Gothics

Book excerpt: A collection of studies on the Gothic in the Middle East and North Africa. This is the first collection to cover Gothic literature from the Middle East and North Africa, surveying each of the major Middle Eastern languages--Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish. In these languages and contexts, the Gothic helps express ongoing literary negotiations with modernity, leaving its distinctive mark on representations of globalization, postcolonialism, and nationalism. At the same time, Middle Eastern literary texts expand the boundaries of the mode on their own terms, refracting broad histories through local and indigenous forms, figures, and narratives commonly associated with the Gothic.