“A provocative and appropriately subversive book.”—The New York TimesIn travel books and Orientalist painting, the Victorian concept of an erotic East as a grand harem with endless potential for pleasure and perversion fueled romantic imaginations, art, and commerce. These racial and sexual stereotypes became vital to imperial designs.In Imperial Fictions, Rana Kabbani unravels the erotic fantasies and myths that the West has developed about the East over the ages.Includes a new introduction about modern-day perceptions of the Islamic world.Rana Kabbani is a poet and translator of modern Arabic poetry. She was born in Damascus in 1958 and brought up in New York City and Djakarta.

Imperial Fictions: Europes Myths of Orient

Kabbani, Rana

History

Pandora

8vo. ix (i), 166 pp, list of 10 b&amp;w plates, acknowledgments, Introduction, 1. Lewd Saracens; 2. The Text as Pretext; 3. The Salon's Seraglio; 4. Doughty Travellers; 5. Among the Believers; Conclusory Remarks: The Innocents Abroad; notes and references, bibliography, index. First Edition, 1986. Green cloth with gilt lettering to spine. "The author places emphasis on the Victorian artists and adventurers who devised the cult of Orientalism in the nineteenth century. She presents an incisive review of the poets, painters, pornographers, soldiers, and scholars who reinforced each other's racial, sexual, and class biases during the subjugation of North Africa and the Middle East, illustrating and explaining the European male's fantasy relationship with the harem; Victorian gentlemen's projection of sexual deviance, indolence, betrayal, and vengeance onto their fictional sultans, eunuchs, and dancing slave girls; and the obsession of Western writers with the archetypal femal figures of Cleopatra, Salome, and Scheherazade." from the jacket flap.

Europe's Myths of Orient

Asia

Indiana Univ. Pr

Literature & Fiction

Indiana University Press

“A provocative and appropriately subversive book.”—The New York Times
In travel books and Orientalist painting, the Victorian concept of an erotic East as a grand harem with endless potential for pleasure and perversion fueled romantic imaginations, art, and commerce. These racial and sexual stereotypes became vital to imperial designs.
In Imperial Fictions, Rana Kabbani unravels the erotic fantasies and myths that the West has developed about the East over the ages.
Includes a new introduction about modern-day perceptions of the Islamic world.
Rana Kabbani is a poet and translator of modern Arabic poetry. She was born in Damascus in 1958 and brought up in New York City and Djakarta.

Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of Orient

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Saqi Books

Europe's Myths of Orient: Devise and Rule

Pandora P

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