New Literature and Philosophy of the Middle East: The Chaotic Imagination (Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World)

In an inspired piece of criticism, Mohaghegh tracks the idea of chaos into the contemporary philosophical and cultural imagination of the so-called 'Third Worlds', exploring its vital role in the formation of an emergent avant-garde literature. Concentrating on writings of the twentieth-century Middle Eastern new wave--including the chaotic configurations of Sadeq Hedayat, Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamlu, and Adonis--Mohaghegh uncovers provocative experiments with the outer boundaries of thought and text. What surfaces, in the end, is a rising language of blindness, desertion, annihilation, and illusion, one that has cast an enigmatic shadow across the future of world literature.