Exile, Existentialism, and Identity in Emily Nasrallah's Flight Against Time

Abstract

In 1995 Roger Allen stated that the focus of most Arabic language critical studies of the Arabic novel has been largely historical, national, or thematic. He points out, however, that to Western feminist critics, gender has been a central topic of interest for some time and is likely to continue to be (132). Indeed, writings by Middle Eastern and North African women have been the subject of numerous works by both Western and Eastern critics, most notably Miriam Cooke's War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War (1988) and Evelyne Accad's Veil of Shame: The Role of Women in the Contemporary Fiction of North Africa and the Arab World (1978) and Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East (1990).