Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 - Humanities — Communication

This collection offers the first translations into English of the work of Nimrod, a Chadian francophone essayist, novelist, and poet. Ekotto (Univ. of Michigan) provides an introduction, and the collection includes selected essays from Nimrod's The New French Matter (La nouvelle chose francaise, 2008), two essays from his Leopold Sedar Senghor: In Memoriam (Tombeau de Leopold Sedar Senghor, 2003), selections from his collection of short stories, The Rivers' Gold (L'or des rivieres, 2010), and a selection of poems. The volume closes with an afterword by Ekotto, in which she reflects on one of Nimrod's recurring themes--the act of writing in exile. Readers of French will appreciate the inclusion of the original French versions of the poems. The pieces selected for this collection argue conclusively for the significance of Nimrod's contribution to the literary arts, whether read from the perspective of African literature, literature in French, or world literature. His essays, in particular, are valuable as food for thought for anyone interested in the implications of African writing in the language of the former colonizer.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

In his preface, Dabashi expresses his desire to transcend such imperial constructs as "World Literature" (with its "imposing Euro-universalist capital letters") by uncovering what is "real." By this he means to recognize the artistic vitality of the Persian epic poem Shahnameh--which was written by Abu al-Qasem Ferdowsi over several decades and completed in 1010--as "a towering masterpiece of worldly literature" (lowercased) liberated from its imperial past and present. The present is one in which the Shahnameh is a culturally appropriated work epistemically violated by liberal academics who are otherwise committed to postcolonial, transnational conceptions of "World Literature." Lest anyone be under the impression that the "world literatures" of today's college curricula have already been transformed, Dabashi argues that only a few erudite Euro-American critics understand that they are hopelessly blinded by false consciousness. Even critics who understand their imperial privilege are victims of what Dabashi calls, in his conclusion, "closed-circuited speculation" leaving them "entirely oblivious to the even more they do not know." Ultimately, it is not preaching to the politically converted that achieves Dabashi's goal of compelling others to read Ferdowsi's epic. It is his love of his native epic coupled with his obvious gifts as a teacher that succeed where the tired cultural politics of the postcolonial academy fail.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.