SOAS LITERARY REVIEW (1), Winter 1999

Contents

Introduction

The first issue of SOAS Literary Review provides a glimpse of the richness of literary research at SOAS. The articles range from Somalia to Pakistan via a journey from the Cape to Cairo. Maxamed Daahir Afrax discusses the dissonance between rural poetic traditions and modern urban society in Somalia. Anders Breidlid, in his article on the South African writer, Marxist, and anti-apartheid campaigner, Alex La Guma, explores the notion of resistance literature and its possibilities and limits for political practice. In his discussion of the Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Anshuman Mondal assesses the representation of women and sexuality in his famous Cairo Trilogy.

This issue also includes Amina Yaqin’s translations of three contemporary women Urdu poets. While introducing the work of these poets to a wider audience, we also hope that translations will become a regular feature of the journal and stimulate discussion on the processes of translation and its role in literary research.

Another feature which has a specific relevance to postgraduate research in the literatures of our chosen regions is demonstrated by Munizha Ahmad’s notes on her fieldwork in India. As this article states, the experiences of literary fieldwork and the issues raised by them is an area which would benefit from collective discussion. Again, the intention is that a dialogue will be created through which problems can be raised and possibly resolved.

We finish with a review of a recent book on the Turkish revolutionary poet, Nazim Hikmet, and Kai Easton’s appraisal of a documentary on the work of the double Booker-prize winning South African writer J.M.Coetzee. While this issue has focused on research being conducted here at SOAS, future issues will bring together the work of postgraduates from other universities and colleges.