Representations of Political Violence in Contemporary Middle Eastern Fiction

Today many Middle Eastern states are experiencing political violence, either in the form of foreign occupation, civil war, revolution or coup d’état. This regional violence is not dissociated from international politics. In fact many foreign states are directly involved through influencing, financing or manipulating the situation, and have subsequently been the target of violent attacks themselves. Responding to this situation, a plethora of academic and artistic output concerning Middle Eastern terrorism has emerged from the West. These efforts, especially in English-language fiction, have been mainly reductive and simplistic and have contributed to furthering an atmosphere of mistrust and Islamophobia that emerged after 9/11. Yet in the decade following 9/11 little attention has been given to Middle Eastern writers who have been treating the subject of political violence in their own fiction and whose works are available in a variety of languages. This thesis analyzes five Middle Eastern novels that depict major regional conflict zones. Alaa Al-Aswany, Orhan Pamuk, Assaf Gavron, Yasmina Khadra, and Mohsin Hamid’s novels describe the nuances of their respective contexts: Egypt, Turkey, Israel/Palestine, Iraq and Pakistan. The following analyses highlight the complexity of Middle Eastern political violence and shed light on how these authors perceive or respond to Terrorism discourse in their fictions.