Jews and Muslims in contemporary British fiction: Claire Hajaj’s Ishmael’s Oranges and Jemma Wayne’s Chains of Sand

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay analyses two twenty-first century novels, Claire Hajaj’s Ishmael’s Oranges (2014) and Jemma Wayne’s Chains of Sand (2016), to explore the ways in which they attempt to make personal, intercultural relations take a political form. Each does so by representing relationships between Muslims and Jews in Britain which are inextricable from the contemporary situation in Israel and Palestine. The essay concludes by suggesting that, although the relationships between Jews and Muslims in these novels are shown to be determined by British colonial history, they are for that very reason rarely represented in the context of present-day Britain itself.