Islam, Ethics, Revolt Politics and Piety in Francophone West African and Mahgreb Narrative

This book analyzes how Francophone narratives written from the 1950s to the 1990s explore the struggle to craft decolonized forms of Islamic identity within sub-Saharan and North African societies. Considering major narratives by Camara Laye, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Mariama Ba, Assia Djebar, Rachid Boudjedra, Yambo Ouologuem, and Amadou Kourouma, Donald R. Wehrs highlights not only the writers' often sharply divergent attitudes toward Islam but also of possible relations among the varying assessments of Islamic self-hood that are neither uncritical of Western modernity nor unreflectively hostile toward it. In articulating their conceptions of Islamic identity and ethical subjectivity, all of these writers set up a dialogue with the ethical implications of novelistic discourse.

Donald R. Wehrs is associate professor of English at Auburn University