The concept of home has been changing for more than a century. This change began with colonialism and the movement of people across the globe, often within a set power dynamic. Since people now move with greater frequency, the question of where home is and what home means is more relevant than ever before.Meticulously researched, "Transformations of the Liminal Self" addresses the formation of home and identity and the ways in which the latter depends on the former. Using the postcolonial Muslim characters in the literary works of British authors Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, and Fadia Faqir, author Alaa Alghamdi shows how home and identity are profoundly impacted by the power dynamics of the colonial relationship, the individual immigrant's experience, and the subject's multicultural setting. Drawing upon the theoretical work of Homi Bhabha, Rosemary Marangoly George, Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak, and Edward Said, the conception of home and the formation of hybrid identities is examined and connected to larger cultural manifestations of Muslim-Western relationships. More specifically, Alghamdi explores how these characters define their home.Bold and challenging, Alghamdi's work offers a rigorous and well-articulated contribution to the ongoing academic conversation about identity and postcolonial literature.

Twenty-two-year-old Maryam, a Saudi woman living comfortably with her parents in Medina, is old enough to get married and old enough to get a job. She is also old enough to pursue postgraduate studies in English in Leeds in the United Kingdom-but that option fuels her dilemma. Her hesitation to study abroad stems from the fact she is a devout and traditional woman, deeply dedicated to her Muslim faith. She is initially ambivalent about leaving the world she has always known. Even so, encouraged by her mother, an academic who also studied and lived in the West, she ventures to this new place and encounters both enriching experiences and a sense of displacement. What's more, her sojourn in the West leads to a new set of decisions to be made. A story of contemporary women's fiction, Road to Medina follows Maryam from the age of twenty-two, when she is deciding to apply to study in Leeds, to her eventual return to Saudi Arabia several years later.

The concept of home has been changing for more than a century. This change began with colonialism and the movement of people across the globe, often within a set power dynamic. Since people now move with greater frequency, the question of where home is and what home means is more relevant than ever before. Meticulously researched, "Transformations of the Liminal Self" addresses the formation of home and identity and the ways in which the latter depends on the former. Using the postcolonial Muslim characters in the literary works of British authors Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, and Fadia Faqir, author Alaa Alghamdi shows how home and identity are profoundly impacted by the power dynamics of the colonial relationship, the individual immigrant's experience, and the subject's multicultural setting. Drawing upon the theoretical work of Homi Bhabha, Rosemary Marangoly George, Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak, and Edward Said, the conception of home and the formation of hybrid identities is examined and connected to larger cultural manifestations of Muslim-Western relationships. More specifically, Alghamdi explores how these characters define their home. Bold and challenging, Alghamdi's work offers a rigorous and well-articulated contribution to the ongoing academic conversation about identity and postcolonial literature.