This book traces the genealogy of 'women's fiction' in South Asia and looks at the interesting and fascinating world of fiction by Muslim women. It explores how Muslim women have contributed to the growth and development of genre fiction in South Asia and brings into focus diverse genres, including speculative, horror, campus fiction, romance, graphic, dystopian amongst others, from the early 20th century to the present.
The book debunks myths about stereotypical representations of South Asian Muslim women and critically explores how they have located their sensibilities, body, religious/secular identities, emotions, and history, and have created a space of their own. It discusses works by authors such as Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Hijab Imtiaz Ali, Mrs. Abdul Qadir, Muhammadi Begum, Abbasi Begum, Khadija Mastur, Qurratulain Hyder, Wajida Tabbasum, Attia Hosain, Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, Selina Hossain, Shaheen Akhtar, Bilquis Sheikh, Gulshan Esther, Maha Khan Phillips, Zahida Zaidi, Bina Shah, Andaleeb Wajid, and Ayesha Tariq.
A volume full of remarkable discoveries for the field of genre fiction, both in South Asia and for the wider world, this book, in the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, will be useful for scholars and researchers of English literary studies, South Asian literature, cultural studies, history, Islamic feminism, religious studies, gender and sexuality, sociology, translation studies, and comparative literatures.
Introduction
Section I
Genres and Early Fiction
1. Fruits of Freedom: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Writings as Genre
Fiction
Barnita Bagchi
2. Locating Romance and Women Writers in Urdu Literature: Hijab Imtiaz Ali's Genre
Fiction
Shweta Sachdeva Jha
3. "I'm nobody! Who are you?" Mrs. Abdul Qadir's Horror Fiction and the Non-
Authorial
Jaideep Pandey
4. Gendering the Urdu Novel: Muhammadi Begum, Abbasi Begum, and the Women
Question
Mohammed Afzal
Section II
Genres and Modernity
5. Women Who Wielded Pens: Khadija Mastur
Mehr Afshan Farooqi
6. "Studies in [ ] Dying Culture[s]": Qurratulain Hyder and Urdu Fantasy Fiction in Self-translation
Fatima Rizvi
7. "The Forbidden City": An Exploration of Wajida Tabassum's Fiction
Wafa Hamid
8. '1971 Novels' in Bangladesh: Women's Writing between the Popular and the Literary
Mosarrap Hossain Khan
9. Sunlight on a Broken Column and The Heart Divided as Autobiographically-Inspired
Realist Texts: Navigating Gendered Socio-political Identities in Genre Fiction
Mobeen Hussain
Section III
Postcolonial Genres
10. "Obedient daughters" and the Deployment of Graphic Stereotypes
Christel Devadawson
11 Contemporary Politics and Prehistoric Past through Popular Genres: Maha Khan
Phillips' Novels
Mohammad Asim Siddiqui
12. Occupying Educational and Intellectual Space: Woman as Radical Flâneuse in Zahida Zaidi's Campus Novel Inqilab Ka Ek Din
Aysha Munira Rasheed
13. Making Sense of Conversion to Christianity in Twentieth-Century Pakistan: Two
Women's Co-Authored Autobiographies as Crafted Accounts
Madeline Clements
14. Feminist Futures in the Speculative Fictions of Andaleeb Wajid and Bina Shah
Umme Al-wazedi
