Arab Brazil Fictions of Tertiary Orientalism

Arab-Brazilian relations have been largely invisible to area studies and Comparative Literature scholarship. Arab Brazil is the first book of its kind to highlight the representation of Arab and Muslim immigrants in Brazilian literature and popular culture since the early twentieth century, revealing anxieties and contradictions in the country's ideologies of national identity.

Author Waïl S. Hassan analyzes these representations in a century of Brazilian novels, short stories, and telenovelas. He shows how the Arab East works paradoxically as a site of otherness (different language, culture, and religion) and solidarity (cultural, historical, demographic, and geopolitical ties). Hassan explores the differences between colonial Orientalism's binary structure of Self/Other, East/West, and colonizer/colonized, on the one hand; and on the other hand Brazilian Orientalism's ternary structure, which defines the country's identity in relation to both North and East.

Waïl S. Hassan is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Among other books, he is the author of Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British Literature, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions, and Portuguese-to-Arabic translator of Alberto Mussa's Lughz al-qaf. Hassan is a past president of the American Comparative Literature Association.

Note on Translation and Transliteration
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Mistura and Tertiary Orientalism
1. Oriental Wisdom: Malba Tahan and Humberto de Campos
2. Merchants to Landowners: Cecílio Carneiro and Permínio Asfora
3. Arab Bahia: Jorge Amado
4. Parable of Integration: Raduan Nassar
5. Amazonian Orient: Milton Hatoum
6. Feline Mermaid: Ana Miranda
7. Islam on Primetime TV: O Clone
8. Shahrazad in the Tropics: Nélida Piñon
9. Brazilian Mu'allaqa: Alberto Mussa
10. Al-Andalus Re-Imagined: Gilberto Abrão and João Almino
11. Syrian Refugees: Órfãos da terra
Conclusion: It's All in the Kibbeh
Works Cited
Index