First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is one of the first books in English to explore Arab responses to Western culture and values in modern Arab literature. Through in-depth research El-Enany examines the attitudes as expressed mainly through works of fiction written by Arab authors during the twentieth, and, to a lesser extent, nineteenth century. It constitutes an original addition to the age-old East-West debate, and is particularly relevant to the current discussion on Islam and the West.

Alongside raising highly topical questions about stereotypical ideas concerning Arabs and Muslims in general, the book explores representations of the West by the foremost Arab intellectuals over a two-century period, up to the present day, and will appeal to those with an interest in Islam, the Middle East, nationalism and the so-called Clash of Civilizations .

This book explores Arab responses to Western culture and values as expressed mainly through works of fiction written by Arab authors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It provides welcome new insights into the perennial East-West debate, and is particularly relevant to the current discussion on Islam and the West.
"Arab Representations of the Occident "might be seen as the reverse study of Edward Said's famous "Orientalism," If Orientalism, according to Said, provided the conceptual framework, the intellectual justification for the appropriation of the Orient through colonialism, "Occidentalism" - if one may use this label to indicate Arab conceptualizations of the West - tells a different story. It is a story, not about the appropriation of the land of the West, but its very soul. And if Orientalism was about the denigration, and the subjugation of the Oriental Other, much of Occidentalism has been about the idealization of the Western Other, the desire to become the Other, or at least to become like the Other.
Alongside raising highly topical questions about stereotypical ideas about Arabs and Muslims in general, this book - the first book on the subject in English - explores representations of the West by the foremost Arab intellectuals over a two-century period, right up to the present day.

In 1988 Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's most famous novelist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. This is the first comprehensive study of the writer and his achievement.
Rasheed El-Enany presents a systematic evaluation of the author's life and environment. He traces the local and foreign influences on Mahfouz's work, elements of his thought and technique, and the evolution of his craft. As well as tracing the thematic and aesthetic continuity in Mahfouz's writing, the volume also discusses each of his works individually. The story that emerges is one of Mahfouz's struggle to free his novels from prevalent, predominantly Western moulds, and to express his own socio-political thought within the Arabic tradition.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203416805

This boxset consists of a collection of newspaper articles and earlier essays, presented in four volumes. Each volume is introduced by Professor Rasheed El-Enany (University of Exeter). Volume I compiles Mahfouz's early non-fiction writings mostly authored during the 1930s, offering a rare glimpse into the early development of the renowned author. Volume II is a collection of essays Mahfouz published from 1971 to 1981 in the Al-Ahram newspaper where he had taken up an appointment as a member of the editorial staff after retiring from his job as a civil servant. Volume III consists of newspaper articles published between 1982 and 1988, coinciding with the early years of Hosni Mubarak's presidency, described by Mahfouz as an 'unhurried democracy'. Volume IV brings together Mahfouz's articles written from 1989 and the knife attack in October 1994 that almost ended his life.