Overview

In the late 1950s, Iraqi Jews were either forced or chose to leave Iraq for Israel. Finding it impossible to continue writing in Arabic in Israel, many Iraqi Jewish novelists faced the literary challenge of switching to Hebrew. Focusing on the literary works of the writers Shimon Ballas, Sami Michael and Eli Amir, this book examines their use of their native Iraqi Arabic in their Hebrew works. It examines the influence of Arabic language and culture and explores questions of language, place and belonging from the perspective of sociolinguistics and multilingualism.In addition, Ahmed applies stylistics as a framework to investigate the range of linguistic phenomena that can be found in these exophonic texts, such as code-switching, borrowing, language and translation strategies. This new stylistic framework for analysing exophonic texts offers a future model for the study of other languages.The social and political implications of this dilemma, as it finds expression in creative writing, are also manifold. In an age of mass migration and population displacement, the conflicted loyalties explored in this book through the prism of Arabic and Hebrew are relevant in a range of linguistic contexts.

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9781474444446

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Reviews

Mohamed A.H. Ahmed excellently explores the influence of Arabic language and culture on Hebrew literary writing of Arab-Jewish writers. Demonstrating intimate familiarity with the vast majority of literature dedicated to the study of these writers and with relevant theoretical tools, the book is by any criteria a solid piece of scholarship and a remarkable critical performance.--Professor Reuven Snir, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, the University of Haifa

Author Information

Mohamed A.H. Ahmed, Visiting Researcher, University of Cambridge.

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