Novels can reproduce or contest Islamophobia irrespective of authorial intent through formal features

Evidence

This book is not about Islamophobia in the novel. Rather, it critically surveys some fictional dramatizations of cultural difference and conflict that take their cue from current anxieties. It traces a variety of responses, some of which tend to reproduce existing ideological biases and others that question or refute them. Through contextualized close readings of a number of English-language texts from around the world, the book reveals how literary responses to the supposed “clash of civilizations” have been nuanced and often highly critical. The novels demonstrate a range of positions: from the avowedly secular to the religious and from texts that appear to underwrite Western assumptions of cultural superiority to those that recognize and critique neoimperial impulses. Although some authors in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 (9/11) can be said to have actively aligned themselves with the presumed values of the West, formal ambiguities within their texts make for a complex and often ambiguous interpretative experience that challenges the truth claims of culturally exclusivist agendas. From texts that appear to underpin the liberal humanist and individualist qualities taken to mark the emergence both of the modern West and the novel form itself to those that interrogate, reject, or even parody those certainties, the range of literary responses suggests a deep critical intelligence that might usefully inform broader and often more simplistic debates. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 16

Categorization

• SEED: Readers can be told whether a book is anti-Islamophobic or not, by mapping authorial statement against formal ambiguity.
• XREF: Key methodological frame relevant to Home Boy and The Reluctant Fundamentalist readings.