Migration to the Gulf in the Arabic Novel

Nadeen Dakkak is Lecturer in World and Postcolonial Literatures in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. She was IASH-Alwaleed Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh in 2021–2022 and completed her PhD in English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. She is editor of Narratives of Dislocation in the Arab World: Rewriting Ghurba (Routledge, 2023) and has published a number of articles and book chapters on Gulf migration in literature and popular culture.

In this nuanced and incisive book, Nadeen Dakkak turns the spotlight on the literary manifestations of Arab migration to the Gulf, long overshadowed by (im)migration to the “North,” or the “West” – Europe and the Americas. In setting narrative fictions by Egyptian, Palestinian, Lebanese and Eritrean writers within a global context of imperial and capitalist relations, Dakkak debunks many stereotypes about Gulf countries and invites further studies of the vibrant literature from and about that part of the Arab world.

• Series Editor's ForewordAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Oil, Migration and the Beginnings of a GenreDesert Encounters: Displacement and Alienation in Palestinian NarrativesBetween ‘Contract’ and ‘Land’: Egyptian Migration Narratives in a Decade of TransformationsGendered Gulf Encounters: Migrant Women and Alienation in the Desert Writings of Hanan Al-ShaykhBeyond the Citizen/Non-Citizen Dichotomy: Writing Class into the Narrative of Migrant Victimisation and MarginalisationThe Gulf as a Space of Labour: Reproductive Work and the Production of Disciplined Migrant BodiesFragile Claims: Second-Generation Narratives of Belonging and ExclusionAfterword: The Future of a GenreReferencesIndex