Hydrocarbon Genre:

The Oil Encounter in Abdel Munif’s Cities of Salt and Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason

Authors

  • Vineet Mehta

Keywords:

Abdel Munif, Oil, Arab, Amitav Ghosh, Novel

Abstract

 

This paper analyzes Abdel Munif’s Cities of Salt and Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason as illustrations of the ‘Hydrocarbon Genre.’ These novels narrate the socio-cultural-economic and ecological implications of the oil business on the Arab world. Munif and Ghosh, in these works, expose the dark underside of the petro-capitalist takeover of the Middle East. They not only point out the complicity of the Gulf’s elite in the resultant crisis but also delve in detail into the various forms of resistance to the new petro-capitalist order. This paper further attempts to establish these novels as a subversive retendering of the oil encounter from a marginalized native’s and an excluded migrant’s perspective

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Author Biography

Vineet Mehta

Vineet Mehta is an Associate Professor in the Postgraduate Department of English at Doaba College, Jalandhar (Punjab). He has recently submitted a dissertation on the topic: Ecocritical Concerns in the Fiction of Amitav Ghosh: A Critique, for the award of PhD at Punjabi University, Patiala. His areas of interest are literary theory, philosophy, cultural studies besides poetry. He has presented his papers at various national and international seminars. Papers and poems have been published in various research journals and literary magazines.

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Published

2021-10-28

How to Cite

Mehta , V. . (2021). Hydrocarbon Genre:: The Oil Encounter in Abdel Munif’s Cities of Salt and Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason. Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 1(2), 170–179. Retrieved from http://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/40