ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Arab literary responses to the disappointments and devastation wrought by past colonization and present imperialism with a focus on Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq. From the 1960s until today, Arab women and men novelists, autobiographers and short story writers have examined the decolonizing strategies characters have evolved to decenter master narratives, write their own histories, resist oppression and violence, recover dignity and recognize humanity even in those marked as the enemy. The politics of thinking friendship with literary characters and their authors allows readers to see the universality that transcends the particularity of individual stories. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the role of teaching modern Arabic literature in shaping critical practice and theory.
