In Scheherazade's Footsteps: Features of the Women's Novel in the UAE

About this book

In a world where the echoes of tale meet reality, this study comes to reveal unique features in the map of contemporary Arabic literature—specifically in the Emirati women's novel. Author Abdel-Maksoud Mohamed dives into the depths of this narrative art, inspired by the legend of One Thousand and One Nights, to show how the Emirati woman writer, like Scheherazade, managed to employ narration as a tool not only to save the self, but to shape a distinctive artistic and creative identity. This is not just a critical reading, but a deep exploratory journey into the vocabulary of women's fiction in the UAE, where the author traces its development and reveals the narrative styles used—dramatic narration, multiple narration, and retrospective narration. It also sheds light on employing folk heritage and real characters, and drawing inspiration from myth and imagination in women writers' texts. It pauses at the aesthetics of using poetry in narration, dealing with the bizarre and mythical imagination, and how women writers managed to build an intricate, deep narrative plot. The book highlights the power of this literature.