Latin American and Arab Literature

Examines the circulation of literature, routes of comparison and the legacies of transcontinental ties

• Traces cultural exchange between Latin America and the Arab world in the 20th and 21st centuries
• Examines the relationship between Latin American and Arabic literatures and the circulation of literature across continents with historical, cultural and literary ties
• Analyses works by Gabriel García Márquez, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Naguib Mahfouz, Elias Khoury, Sonallah Ibrahim, Mohamed Makhzangi, Jabbar Yussin Hussin and Hassan Blasim

Since the 19th century, Arab migration from the Ottoman Empire to Latin America and Latin American travel to the Arab world has created transcontinental routes – and in the late 20th century, the translation of Latin American classics into Arabic flourished in the Arab world. Drawing on Latin American and Arabic novels, travelogues, memoirs, short stories and chronicles from Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq, Tahia Abdel Nasser shows how cultural exchange between Latin America and the Arab world cemented historical and diplomatic ties. She also explores how a new cadre of men of letters – poets, writers and intellectuals – shaped Arab Latin American encounters in the late 20th century.