Hudā Barakāt’s novels are complex and densely woven texts that focus on the obsessions and inner conflicts of their protagonists. The first monograph dealing with the Lebanese author’s work, this book presents in-depth analyses of her first three novels, each of which addresses one key aspect: androgyny as metaphor, madness between lovesickness and mystical experience, and utopia or ‘real’ counter-worlds. In the context of the ‘spatial turn’, the study analyzes these aspects as transgressions or borderline situations. It starts by developing a concept of ‘Grenzgänge’ (‘moving across/along borders’) that encompasses various physical as well as conceptual spaces, combining ideas from different disciplines: heterotopy, borderline and transgression, threshold and liminality as well as interspaces or ‘Third Spaces’ and ‘ZwischenWeltenSchreiben’ (‘writing-between-worlds’). The concept elaborated here offers an instrument for analyzing literary texts that opens up new perspectives and reveals analogies and differences between various borderline situations.

Hudā Barakāt’s novels are complex and densely woven texts that focus on the obsessions and inner conflicts of their protagonists. The first monograph dealing with the Lebanese author’s work, this book presents in-depth analyses of her first three novels, each of which addresses one key aspect: androgyny as metaphor, madness between lovesickness and mystical experience, and utopia or ‘real’ counter-worlds. In the context of the ‘spatial turn’, the study analyzes these aspects as transgressions or borderline situations. It starts by developing a concept of ‘Grenzgänge’ (‘moving across/along borders’) that encompasses various physical as well as conceptual spaces, combining ideas from different disciplines: heterotopy, borderline and transgression, threshold and liminality as well as interspaces or ‘Third Spaces’ and ‘ZwischenWeltenSchreiben’ (‘writing-between-worlds’). The concept elaborated here offers an instrument for analyzing literary texts that opens up new perspectives and reveals analogies and differences between various borderline situations.

Literary works are much more than mere illustrations of societal conditions. Literature is the setting in which society discusses itself. In this volume, international scholars of Literary Studies as well as specialists in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish Studies explore the dimensions and ways of how writers, from the classical period to modernity, tackle the values of their societies.