Author Description

This is an original monograph which seeks to link the poetics of the Qur'anic text with the rhetorical devices in the novelistic narratives of three modern Arabic novelists: Egyptian Nobel Laureate Najib Mahfuz, Egyptian novelist Jamal al-Ghitani and Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Kuni. It proposes to survey key findings in modern and classical Arabic literature, Islamic Studies, Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics, analysing the extent to which devices within sacred rhetoric have driven narrative strategies in secular modern Arabic literature. Studies of sacred Islamic texts from a secular viewpoint - i.e. treating them as literary texts open to investigative consideration and the application of theoretical tools usually applied to secular texts - are a rare endeavour. The author is well-placed to write this work, given his broad and deep training in Western literary theory which he will bring to bear on his study of the Qur'an.