A beautiful bahth that sheds a new light on Arabic detective fiction in the twentieth century. Emily Drumsta's original approach makes us rethink genres and epistemologies, juridical and metaphysical quests, and the role of literature in bringing them together.--Tarek El-Ariss, James Wright Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College Drumsta's perceptive consideration of detection in modern Arabic fiction will stimulate readers to consider anew the centrality of the detective figure for writers and intellectuals in the grip of a rapacious and erratic modernization. Starting from the details of the Arabic context, this study ultimately provokes the problem of knowledge itself.--Hosam Aboul-Ela, author of Domestications: American Empire, Literary Culture, and the Postcolonial Lens
