Islam and Postcolonial Narrative (review)

Islam and Postcolonial Narrative, by John Erickson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. xiii + 202 pp. ISBN 0-521-594235.

In a survey of postcolonial literature one rarely comes across a writer of English expression grouped together with francophone authors. In Islam and Postcolonial Narrative, John Erickson has included Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses with three francophone novels by Maghrebian writers: L'amour la fantasia by Assia Djebar, L'enfant de sable by Tahar Ben Jelloun, and Amour bilingue by Abdelkabir Khatibi. What links these four writers, as Erickson is quick to point out, is not merely their Muslim background in countries that were once colonized by Western powers, but also the "mixture of genres" (29) that has come to characterize their writings. Drawing on Islamic and Western literary traditions, and using the languages of the people who colonized them, they have succeeded in honing a mode of expression that they have made their own. It is "an alternative discourse expressive of postcolonial sensibilities and perceptions" that dispenses with the "linear, closed worlds of Eurocentric and Islamic magesterial narratives and discourses" (95). These writers, Erickson makes it clear, are not influenced by the written word alone. Much of their writing, he says, draws "on a multitude of non-written sources" (166). The.reader often encounters in their texts extracts of poems and narratives, based both on religious and secular sources, a living testimony of the cultures they belong to and those they have adopted.

Having established a common ground between all four authors, Erickson goes on to illustrate how each one has developed his/her own unique voice that offers "new and powerful dynamics of narrative engaged in an unending polymorphous and polyphonic mixing" (7). He strongly feels that postcolonial writers, considered by some to be "writing on the periphery" (x), are now reaching out to a wide international readership. By giving voice to those voiceless individuals in their respective societies, they succeed in portraying for us, their readers, horizons many of us are unaware of, while at the same time explaining to us a good deal "about our own differences" (x).

In the chapter on Djebar's novel Erickson has given the title L'amour la fantasia in French, whereas in the chapters on Ben Jelloun's L'enfant de sable and Khatibi's Amour bilingue he refers to the two novels by their English titles, Sandchild and Love in Two Languages respectively. This lack of standardization might give readers the idea that Erickson has based his study entirely on the English translations of the latter two works. This is far from being the case, as the quotations from all three francophone novels are consistently reproduced first in English followed by the original French versions. At the outset he identifies Salman Rushdie's region of origin as the Indian subcontinent (ix), but he later suggests erroneously that Rushdie comes from the Middle East (1, 12).

Erickson tackles his subject matter with a great deal of perception and appreciation. He provides his readers throughout with useful additional information on the religious and cultural background of the literary works he surveys. He occasionally adds a personal touch, as when he recounts his own experiences of living in non-Western countries or teaching postcolonial literature. This gives his work an added dimension and renders it refreshingly free of the dogmatic approach that mars many a similar scholarly work. Islam and Postcolonial Narrative is an original contribution to a growing corpus of works on postcolonial literature. One can see it taking its place as a textbook wherever this literature is studied.

Farida Abu-Haidar

Farida Abu-Haidar is a sociolinguist specializing in the Maghreb. She is a member of the Institute of Linguists in London.

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