Islam in the eastern African novel

"Islam in the Eastern African Novel engages the novels of three important eastern African novelists--Nuruddin Farah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and M. G. Vassanji--by centering Islam as an interpretive lens and critical framework. Mirmotahari argues that recognizing the centrality of Islam in the fictional works of these three novelists has important consequences for the theoretical and conceptual conversations that characterize the study of African literature. The overdue and sustained attention to Islam in these works complicates the narrative of coloniality, the nature of the nation and the nation-state, the experience of diaspora and exile, the meaning of indigenaity, and even the form and history of the novel itself"--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.