Ex Oriente Lux 2018

Ex Oriente Lux 17 Секция II  Литература стран Азии и Африки  literatures of asia and africa Neumann Alexander Michael Josef Freie Universität Berlin, Department of History and Cultural Studies Sex and the Oriental City: Raǧā’aṣ-Ṣāni’s novel Banāt ar-Riyāḍ in the shadow of Chick Lit The question as to what extent «Banāt ar-Riyāḍ» corresponds to the character- istics of the prototypical Chick Lit novel can be answered as follows: a lot. Many of the most basic elements of the chick-lit canon can be found in one form or another in the work. The protagonists of «Banāt ar-Riyāḍ» correspond in their essence to the prototypical chick-lit protagonist: the search for romantic love, the obsession with consumption and good looks, the urban milieu of the upper class. Especially in the details, they differ from their counterparts: in skin color, in the meaning given to fam- ily and religion. However, in the section on the «that’s me» — phenomenon, it was ar- gued that this necessarily had to be done to accommodate another constituent element of the Chick Lit and to create recognition moments. Also, the positive underlying tone of the novel and the happy end correspond to another constitutive element of the Chick Lit, namely to evoke an existential satisfaction feeling in the reader’s mind. The only element that is completely out of the ordinary is the cover. It has been argued that the reason for this may have been the lack of an Arabic visual chick-lit discourse at the time the work was published in 2005. An interesting task for fur- ther research is to investigate this discursive field in more detail. Already in 2006, «Su’ūdīyāt» was published, a similar work whose book cover perfectly complied with the Chick-Lit cover design. One question that can be pursued in further research is whether and to what extent the novel Banāt ar-Riyāḍ influenced the cover art of subsequent books.