Suzanne Gauch. 2007. Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Posteolonialism, and Islam.

• Author: Jalalzai, Zubeda
• Position: Book review

Suzanne Gauch. 2007. Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Posteolonialism, and Islam. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Paper $ 20.00. 224 Pages.

Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Postcolonialism, and Islam is a collection of five chapters that analyze the literary and, in one case, filmic works by writers of what Gauch refers to as the "Maghreb" (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia): Moufida Tlatli, Fatima Memissi, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Assia Djebar, and Leila Sebbar. The text is organized around the central image of the heroine/story teller from The Thousand and One Nights, who has been variously engaged by orientalists, post-colonialists, and feminists alike. For Gauch, Shahrazad is a complex and elusive figure who in various versions of the Nights may either exemplify the exotic and barbaric Orient and/or one whose self-preserving inconclusivity (through continuous story-telling) represents her challenge to absolute definitions. Gauch offers complex interpretations of these provocative texts through generally engaging and perceptive analyses.

The introduction touches on the various editions and versions of The Thousand and One Nights starting with the earliest available 1705 French text from which subsequent editions emerged. In fact the textual history of the Nights is a fascinating one, and more material research into how the text circulated and mutated would have been welcome. But Gauch is less interested in material or textual history than she is of Shahrazad as a cultural symbol taken up by the writers at hand. Gauch links these writers in their various challenges to the image prevalent in some versions of the married, maternal, and ultimately silenced Shahrazad (after she wins the heart of King Shahrayar). Instead these writers, she asserts, engage Shahrazad as "captive of no known author, powerful in her ability to elude finalzing representations by continuously creating in the present" (6). They, she claims, reject this "conclusion of the Nights as premature, implicitly or explicitly integrating Shahrazad's lessons into new, unforeseen narratives" (xiv).

While the subjects of most of the chapters in one way or another make use of the legendary story-teller to challenge the orientalist and patriarchal elements associated with The Thousand and One Nights, some operate less organically in relation to either the content or structure of The Thousand and One Nights. Shahrazad does play a clear role in chapter two which delves into...