Guest Editor's Introduction

The present themed issue of Comparative Critical Studies presents both specialist readers as well as comparatists less familiar with Islamic literatures and cultures with a representative array of critical articles and authorial pronouncements regarding the role of the novel in a grouping of literary traditions in which this genre is perceived as new or foreign, or both new and foreign. It attempts to read across Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Turkish traditions comparatively as well as in their relationship to Western literatures, breaking away from the dominant practice in comparative literature which tends to privilege the West-East paradigm. In the process the issue also hopes to introduce comparatists to the tools and methodology of Area Studies specialists, heeding recent debate about the collaborative task these two fields could and should engage in. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has recently called for aligning comparative literature with Area Studies, while Franco Moretti has spoken of a division of labour between the two.