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Throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the so-called Muslim question has intermittently, though persistently, taken centre stage in Western media and political discourses. In terms of culture within the European context, there is also a substantial body of literature that has engaged with Western anxieties projected onto the Muslim "Other" and, in particular, the Muslim migrant "Other". Literary criticism of Muslim writing and writing about Muslims in Europe has often highlighted the need to offer a more nuanced articulation of Muslim identity that contributes to challenging such othering practices.

Critical studies on Muslim writing produced over the last two decades have predominantly focused on contemporary literature, and the novel in particular, and they have often centred on specific linguistic and national frameworks. This collection of essays adds complexity to existing analyses of contemporary Muslim writing and writing about Muslims and Islam in the European context by emphasizing the comparative perspective of writings produced in different epochs and different linguistic and cultural contexts. Drawing on transcultural and world literature perspectives, Muslim writing is redefined so as to incorporate genres other than the novel and critical approaches that expand on disciplinary redefinitions of literature and literary studies.

The thematic focus and the rigorous in-depth analysis of the different case studies will make this collection relevant to students and academics within the fields of literary and cultural studies, sociology and anthropology, as well as to those in European studies and global studies.

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the connection between the past and the present, as well as between trauma and crisis, in the representation of migrants in the novel On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes.To analyze migration and temporality in this novel, I focus on three key notions: narration, trauma, and loss. I examine how the narrative structures related to Liliana and Ahmed both give them a voice and deprive them of it, thus recreating, at a narratological level, the structures of subalternity and hegemony that also operate on a broader, global scale within the novel. Regarding trauma, I explore the relevance of Spain’s past traumas, specifically the Spanish Civil War, in understanding the representation of migration in the novel. On the other hand, loss—an omnipresent theme in crisis narratives—is analyzed in connection with temporality and migration, as I compare loss from the perspective of the disinherited (Valdivia, 2016)—those who had and lost—and the uninherited—those who never had. Drawing on the notions of loss (linked to the past) and "sense of potentiality" (Urban, 2013) (linked to the future), this chapter explores how trauma resurfaces in times of crisis and how it serves as a key to the representation of migration in On the Edge.

This chapter examines the role of space and the body as carriers of metaphorical meanings related to the notions of the border and migration in the films Biutiful and Victoria. In it, special attention is paid to the way these films use subterranean space to highlight understandings of subversion and exclusion. Limbo, on the other hand, is associated to transition and waiting, key elements of the migrant experience. Visibility/invisibility and speech/silence are also recurring in the metaphorical processes attached to corporality, underground and limbo in these films.

This chapter looks at the use of online discussion forums in a course that unites the study of film, literature and history. The aim is to discuss how asynchronous forums can be designed in such a way that they encourage students' dialogue and promote their analytical skills while at the same time remaining respectful spaces. Key issues discussed here are group size, the role of the teacher, cyberincivility, session length and instructions. This chapter argues that the number of participants and session length have to be carefully considered in order to avoid groups that are too large or forums that are open for too long, because both are seen to decrease student interaction. Other considerations are the inhibiting effect that active teacher participation tends to have in the forum and the role of instructions given to students to avoid cyberincivility.

The aim of this chapter is to study the representation of different borders and its role in the portrayal of otherness in 2020 by Javier Moreno. 2020 is a novel built on the thoughts and voices of a series of characters. Amongst these, we can find Nabil, a young man of Saharawi origin; Jorge, a homeless man with Asperger’s; Josefina, a rich young anorexic woman; and her father, Gowan, a successful businessman of Scottish origin, who has disappeared and is involved in the creation of a mystic revolutionary movement. We explore the ways in which the novel builds a dystopic society through the representation of dysfunctional characters embodying different kinds of otherness and the way in which spatiality and the body are key to understanding how this otherness is created and reinforced.

With the help of the notions of limbo, non-places, hybridity, simulacrum and the dichotomy center-periphery we examine how borders are raised in the novel and how these affect the characters and the depiction of a society in decline. The notions of void and ruins recur as topics in the novel, and are an obsession for Gowan, who is both an observer and a creator of ruins through a series of actions that represent a wider economic reality where objects are bought, sold and trashed. 

We study how the body, which in a way is the first barrier between the characters and the outside, plays a significant role in the novel as a marker of ethnicity, physical illness or, as with Josefina, as the recipient and target of an obsession for corporal void, latent in her eating disorder. Decay, in terms of both the character’s bodies and the spaces around them, functions in 2020 as a metaphor of a dysfunctional socio-economic system that is collapsing.

Las novelas escritas en torno a la crisis financiera de los últimos años en España tienen en común la representación de un espacio urbano que aparece como mucho más que un telón de fondo. En este artículo queremos acercarnos a dos novelas, La habitación oscura y Animales domésticos, que retratan la crisis y la precrisis respectivamente, desde la perspectiva del espacio de la ciudad. La desintegración social y económica tiene un reflejo en el espacio de la ciudad, o podría decirse al revés, el espacio de la ciudad sirve de espejo para la descomposición que se teje en las novelas. En relación a esto destacamos y profundizamos en tres fenómenos: la representación de la ciudad como una arcadia traicionada, el desmoronamiento de ciertos espacios con la exclusión que esto conlleva, y finalmente, la esfera subterránea de la ciudad y su relación con la muerte.

The novels written about Spain’s financial crisis of recent years  have in common the representation of an urban space that serves as much more than simply a background. In this article, we want to examine two novels,  La habitación oscura by Isaac Rosa and Animales domésticos by Marta Sanz, which portray the crisis and pre-crisis respectively from the perspective of the space of the city. Social and economic disintegration mirrors itself in the space of the city or, if we reverse this thought: the space of the city serves as a mirror for the decomposition that is found within the novels. We will thus highlight and delve into three phenomena: the representation of the city as a betrayed arcadia, the collapse of certain spaces and the exclusion that this conveys, and, finally, the city’s underground sphere and its relation to death.

A number of novels about the financial crisis and its consequences have been written in Spain in recent years. In most, migrants are represented in a secondary role, often as short allusions or as mere ornaments. This article aims to highlight one novel, 2020 by Javier Moreno, that breaks that pattern since it features migrant characters in key roles. The article further aims to analyse the relationship between space and the representation of the migrant in the context of a society in crisis. The notions of non-place by Marc Augé and heterotopia by Michel Foucault will serve as the theoretical framework that will allow for an exploration of phenomena such as the inversion of non-places into places, the connection of crisis and deviation, the role of certain spaces as both shelters and containers of the unwanted, the role of gaze in the construction of an exclusion, and the circular movement of powerless characters in time and space throughout the novel.