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Writing in response to war and national crisis, al-Samm?n, Khal?feh, Barak?t, and others introduced into the Arabic literary canon aesthetic forms capable of carrying Levantine women´s experiences. By assessing their feminism in such a way, this book aims to revive a critical emphasis on aesthetics in Arab women´s writing.

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Introduction: Gender, Nation, and War: A New Critical Conjunction
1. The Vicious Cycle: Contemporary Literary Feminisms in the Mashriq
2. The Gendered Subject: Literary Existentialism in Gh?dah al-Samm?n´s "Beirut Tetralogy"
3. Sahar Khal?feh´s Resistance Literature: Towards a Palestinian Critical Realism
4. Gender Dialectics: Hud? Barak?t´s Aesthetics of Androgyny
Afterword: Women Writing War, A Levantine Outlook

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"The most important achievements of this book is its successful balance between the encyclopedic scope required to prove the existence and the importance of a literary movement and the close readings necessary to demonstrate the movement´s avant-gardism. ... Hanna´s Feminism and Avant-Garde Aesthetics in the Levantine Novel represents a valuable intervention in Arab feminist studies, Arab modernist studies, and trauma studies." (Rania Said, H-Levant, networks.h-net.org, August, 2017)

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Kifah Hanna is Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Culture Studies at Trinity College, USA.

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