This book explores the relationship between fictional literature and nation formation in the wider Muslim world. Through twelve unique case studies, it shows how the complex entanglements of nation, religion, and modernity in the process of political and cultural identity formation are probed and verbalized in fiction. The collection of studies in the book is unique. The chapters move beyond well-researched Arab-Muslim core settings such as Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and focus on other Arabic and non-Arabic Muslim majority countries, including Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Iran. The contributions link these literary narratives to the formation of national identities in culturally and linguistically diverse - even antagonistic - settings. The book is excellent reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in Middle Eastern studies, cultural studies, comparative literature, postcolonial studies, anthropology, and sociology, as well as those interested in Muslim societies, and nationalism.

Elisabeth Özdalga received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Since 1983 she has been attached to the Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, where she was appointed full Professor in 1994. She has also worked as director of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. She is the editor of several anthologies related to religion, politics and society in Turkey and the Middle East.

Daniella Kuzmanovic is Associate Professor in modern Turkey studies at the Institute for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has a background in anthropology. Her main research interest is political culture and media history in Turkey. She has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey, and is the author of Refractions of Civil Society in Turkey (2012).

Acknowledgements
On the Contributors
Novel and Nation in the Muslim World: An Introduction; Elisabeth Özdalga
1. The End of Literary Narratives?; Gregory Jusdanis
PART I
2. Writing the Future in Early Turkish Republican Literature; Azade Seyhan
3. Becoming Azerbaijani Through Language: On the Impact of C?lil M?mm?dquluzad?'s Anamin Kitabi; Zaur Gasimov
4. The Kurdish Novel and National Identity-Formation Across Borders; Hashem Ahmadzadeh
PART II
5. Nedjma: Kateb Yacine's Deconstruction of Algeria's Colonial Historiography; Abdelkader Aoudjit
6. For Bread Alone: How Moroccan Literature Let the Subalterns Speak; Florian Kohstall
7. Mahattat: 'Stations' on the Road to the Libyan Nation; Teetz Rooke
PART III
8. Deconstructing Nation and Religion: Young Saudi Women Novelists; Madawi al-Rasheed
9. Wajdi al-Ahdal and the Broken Yemeni Nation; Sören Hebbelstrup
10. Popular Religion and the Entry into Political Modernity as Seen in The Last of the Angels; Sami Zubaida
PART IV
11. Utopia and Dystopia in Early-Modern Persian Literature: Representations of the Advent of Modernity to Iran; Claus Valling Pedersen
12. Indian Shi?a Muslims and the Idea of Home in Rahi Masoom Reza's Work; Torkel Brekke
Afterword: Nations and Fictions; Daniella Kuzmanovic
Index