Religious Perspectives in Modern Muslim and Jewish Literatures

This collection brings together discussions of the way in which Muslim and Jewish beliefs and practices are represented in modern literary texts of poetry, fiction and drama. The chapters collected here consider elements of the expression of Judaism and Islam in modern literature. Key topics such as religious ideas and teachings, aspects of mysticism, the tenets of religion, uses made of sacred texts, religion and popular culture and reflections of religious controversies are covered. While there is an embodied comparative element to the chapters, the essays are not confined by comparisons and cover a wide range of the literary expression of religious issues.

'This book is a valuable source of knowledge on the subject of Jewish and Muslim writers confirming modernity. Explanatory rather than critical, and above all, objective, this book achieves genuine inter-faith understanding...This work being unique of its kind, it can be recommended for college graduates who will not easily find its broad perspective elsewhere.' - The Muslim World Book Review

Glenda Abramson was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, educated in Israel and received her PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. From 1981 she has been teaching at the Oriental Faculty of the University of Oxford and at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Hilary Kilpatrick studied Arabic at Oxford. She has taught Arabic literature at universities in Scotland, the Netherlands and Switzerland. She is one of the editors of the journal Middle Eastern Literatures and has published on modern Arabic fiction and classical Arabic belles-lettres, including Making the Great Book of Songs (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).