Ways of Seeking

In Ways of Seeking, Emily Drumsta traces the influence of detective fiction on the twentieth-century Arabic novel. Theorizing a “poetics of investigation,” she shows how these novels, far from staging awe-inspiring feats of logical deduction, mock the truth-seeking practices on which modern exercises of colonial and national power are often premised. Their narratives return to the archives of Arabic folklore, Islamic piety, and mysticism to explore less coercive ways of knowing, seeing, and seeking. Drumsta argues that scholars of the Middle East neglect the literary at their peril, overlooking key critiques of colonialism from the intellectuals who shaped and responded through fiction to the transformations of modernity. This book ultimately tells a different story about the novelʼs place in the constellation of Arab modernism, modeling an innovative method of open-ended inquiry based on the literary texts themselves.

“A beautiful bahth that sheds a new light on Arabic detective fiction in the twentieth century. Emily Drumstaʼs original approach makes us rethink genres and epistemologies, juridical and metaphysical quests, and the role of literature in bringing them together.” — TAREK EL-ARISS, James Wright Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College

“Drumstaʼs perceptive consideration of detection in modern Arabic fiction will stimulate readers to consider anew the centrality of the detective figure for writers and intellectuals in the grip of a rapacious and erratic modernization. Starting from the details of the Arabic context, this study ultimately provokes the problem of knowledge itself.” — HOSAM ABOUL-ELA, author of Domestications: American Empire, Literary Culture, and the Postcolonial Lens

EMILY DRUMSTA is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She is editor and translator of Revolt Against the Sun: Selected Poetry of Nazik al-Malaʼika.