Hydrofictions

Places water at the centre of a new approach to literary criticism Water is a major global issue that will shape our future. Rarely, however, has water been the subject of literary critical attention. This book identifies water as a crucial new topic of literary and cultural analysis at a critical moment for the world's water resources, focusing on the urgent context of Israel/Palestine. It argues for the necessity of recognising water's vital importance in understanding contemporary Israeli and Palestinian literature, showing that water is as culturally significant as that much more obvious object of nationalist attention, the land. In doing so, it offers new insights into Israeli and Palestinian literature and politics, and into the role of culture in an age of environmental crisis. Hydrofictions shows that how we imagine water is inseparable from how we manage it. This book is urgent and necessary reading for students and scholars in Middle East Studies, postcolonial ecocriticism, the environmental humanities and anyone invested in the future of the world's water. Key features - Contributes to debates within literary studies on the environmental humanities, national literatures and 'cli-fi' - Brings together approaches from literary studies, cultural geography and world politics - Adds a new ecocritical dimension to scholarship on Israeli and Palestinian literature - Introduces the concept of 'hydrofictions' as a new way of analysing literature and resource politics - Covers a broad range of contemporary Israeli and Palestinian authors including Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Sayed Kashua, Amos Oz and Meir Shalev Hannah Boast is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick.