Twenty-first century dystopian fiction from the Middle East and Muslim South Asia

The characterisation of dystopian literature has developed since the genre gained popularity in response to utopian fiction at the turn of the twentieth century. As the counterpart of utopian worlds, dystopian societies are nightmarish and dismally speculative. In Europe and North America, dystopian novels are often described as being Orwellian or Kafkaesque. Allegorical and connected to science-fiction, they can differ from the outwardly political and antagonistic stance of Middle Eastern and Muslim South Asian dystopian texts.
In my introduction I summarise trends in dystopian theory, elucidating both critical dystopia and anti-utopianism. By paying close attention to the context of fiction produced in the Middle East and Muslim South Asia, I explore how processes of postcolonialism and globalisation impact on the rise of dystopian presentations from these regions. Dystopian Middle Eastern and Muslim South Asian literature is often more personal and confrontational, grounded in the present, rather than reflecting an unthinkable future.
Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad and Hassan Blasim’s The Corpse Exhibition portray disintegrating piles of rubbish and bodily dismemberment to underline how bodies become contested territory. Aside from bodily parameters, Prayaag Akbar demonstrates in Leila how boundaries within people’s minds are inscribed into his unequal city’s architecture. In Exit West Mohsin Hamid reflects on the connections between mental parameters and architecture by contemplating unstoppable migration. Finally, this thesis brings together the anthology The Outcast Hours and Bina Shah’s text Before She Sleeps which further reveal parameters of the body and the mind in images of the night-time. I will focus on dystopian texts written during the 2010s to argue that damaged and leaky bodies and traumatised minds are a facet of inescapably violent landscapes. Authors paint crisis-ridden, decomposing fictional worlds to ruminate on displacement, volatility, inequality and violence throughout the Middle East, Muslim South Asia and further afield.