SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Reflections on the Sufi Turn in Arabic Fiction

During the second half of the twentieth century, Arabic novelists turned to the medieval Sufi heritage as a source of language and ideas. Although this has often been written off as a retreat from socially responsible and politically engaged writing, or, worse, an amateurish dabbling in something like magic realism, the Sufi turn provided them with an effective tool for thinking through issues of history and politics as well as creativity, the form of the novel and the place of the writer in the contemporary world.

Ziad Elmarsafy is a Reader in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. He is the author of The Enlightenment Qur’an: The Politics of Translation and the Construction of Islam (Oneworld, 2009) and Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel (Edinburgh University Press, 2012).