ABSTRACT
In 2000, I read an article by Amal Amireh that has influenced me ever since.
Amireh appealed for a ‘vigorous critical discussion about Arabic literature and
culture in the West’ that ‘should go beyond ‘‘appreciative’’ criticism that con-
descendingly praises Arab women writers for ‘‘daring’’ to put pen to paper’.1
Ultimately, Amireh argued, we need more ‘serious debates about fiction [to]
remind readers that they are reading not documentaries, but ‘‘literature,’’ which
draws on particular conventions and emerges from specific traditions’.2 It
seemed to me then that although Amireh had written these words back in 1996,
there was still very little criticism available of the type that she envisaged.
Though certain secondary sources did exist, as Majaj, Sunderman and Saliba
noted in their introduction to their 2002 collection Intersections: Gender, Nation and
Community in Arab Women’s Novels, these did not ‘fully reflect either the availability
of this literature or its significance’.3 Their collection in fact was the first suc-
cessful attempt to put into practice Amireh’s vision. Here, a wide range of Arab
women writers from Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Algeria received critical
treatment and genuine engagement. It is with this book in mind that I set out to
build on the principle of active negotiation with Arab women’s writing.
