This paper examines the complex relationship between mind, body, and identity as represented in Hanif Kureishi’s The Body (2002). The narrative centres on Adam, an elderly writer who undergoes a radical transformation—a brain transplant into a youthful body. Through this futuristic scenario, Kureishi compels us to question traditional notions of selfhood. Using an interdisciplinary approach—drawing on insights from brain science, philosophy, psychology, posthumanism, and literary theory—this paper argues that Adam is still Adam stressing on the brain crucial role in the persistence and coherence of personal identity through time. It is thus the brain that matters not the ‘body’ as implied by the novel’s title. The body is nothing but a vehicle of the self, a machine-like carrier of consciousness. In short, this paper attempts to use the novel as a laboratory for thought experiments where the dimensions of personal identity can be easily tested and observed.

This research examines the symbolic meaning of the red sorghum fields in Mo Yan’s novel Red Sorghum, illustrating their importance as a symbol of survival, resistance, and cultural heritage. The research discusses how the novel blends historical events with highly personal accounts, depicting the horrors of war, the strength of human nature, and the unbreakable bond between humans and their country. With an appeal to elements of magical realism and non-chronological narration, the novel establishes the sorghum fields both as a conflict zone and refuge, exemplifying the oppositionality of ruin and renewal. Examining the aspects of literary methodology and thematic discourse, the article points out that the novel engages China’s restless past and is concerned with the persistence of cultural identity. Finally, this analysis highlights the book’s contribution to world literature since it presents an alternative understanding of memory, history, and the human spirit.

Bobbie Ann Mason’s Feather Crowns, set against the backdrop of the social uproar caused by the birth and premature death of quintuplets in rural Kentucky, demonstrates the ethical pressures and psychological conflicts that arise when the otherwise private experience of motherhood is brought into the public eye. Taking Christie Wheeler’s motherhood as the research object, this paper explores how spectacle culture and consumer culture hold the ethics of motherhood hostage at the turn of the 20th century and the maternal dilemma it triggers. The intervention of the spectacle reshapes Christie’s perception of motherhood, forcing her into the ethical dilemmas regarding the handling of her quintuplets; while her gradual resistance to the mechanism of the spectacle reflects the awakening and reconstruction of the maternal identity. By presenting the erosion and oppression of motherhood by the spectacle culture, Mason reveals the intervention and rewriting of intimacy by public consumption, and points out that in the spectacle-dominated social landscape, individuals can still reclaim their proper subjectivity through ethical choices.

We explore how Indonesian female ghosts—Kuntilanak, Sundel Bolong, Wewe Gombel, and Si Manis Jembatan Ancol—embody something far more complex than simple horror. These spectral women transform from victims of patriarchal violence into vengeful agents of justice. Their stories reveal deep cultural anxieties about women’s place in Indonesian society. Our descriptive-qualitative analysis connects these folkloric figures to contemporary realities. We examine how ghost narratives reflect ongoing struggles with gender-based violence and inadequate policy responses. Statistical data on violence against women and limited healthcare access illuminate the gaps these stories expose. These female spirits don’t just haunt—they critique. They challenge patriarchal structures while demanding recognition of systemic failures. We find that Indonesian folklore anticipates what policy-makers have been slow to address: the urgent need for comprehensive gender equality reforms. The ghosts speak where living women’s voices are silenced. We argue their enduring power lies in making visible the violence that society prefers to ignore. This research demonstrates how traditional narratives can illuminate paths toward more equitable legal frameworks and social structures.

Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse examines how the lives of the people of the Banda Islands are intrinsically connected to their landscapes and the environment. Their livelihoods and culture revolve around the nutmeg, which is traded with other countries. The study will examine how the text challenges the traditional Western anthropocentric views of nature as an inert object that led colonizers to exploit the nutmeg trade, resulting in destructive changes like resource extraction, environmental exploitation, land ownership, displacement of indigenous people and the imposition of the nutmeg monoculture. By examining how Ghosh’s work depicts the agency of non-human subjects, the paper emphasizes the need for recognizing the interdependence between humans and the natural world, the intrinsic value of biodiversity, and the ethical significance of land, which form the core concerns of environmental ethics. The paper will use ideas from environmental ethics as the theoretical framework to understand the urgent need to recognize non-humans as subjects and call for developing ethical relationships between humans and non-human beings so as to save the planet from further environmental catastrophes.

Ecocriticism as an interdisciplinary lens for scrutinizing the relationship between literature and environment has been growing rapidly in literary studies and criticism since 1990, reaching many parts of the world (Johnson 2009). In Arabic literature, however, ecocriticism is still in its early stages (Hamoud et al. 2012). In other words, such studies remain relatively rare; hence, opening up the field in Arab academia is greatly valuable for diversifying and enriching contemporary debates. Drawing on ecocritical theory, particularly Glotfelty’s insights, among others, this paper examines Badriah Albeshr’s Sir Alzafaranah (2023) through an ecocritical lens, focusing on the novel’s portrayal of the interrelationship between humans and other creatures. It argues that Albeshr has challenged human-centered narratives by emphasizing the agency of nature and the interconnectedness of all living things. Through close textual analysis, the study reveals Albeshr’s subtle yet profound engagement with ecological thought and environmental concerns. The story intricately describes the interrelation between humans and nature. Through the characters of Naflah and Zafaranah, the author skillfully illustrates the strong bond between humans and nature and other world creatures, emphasizing the connectivity and affinity between women and nature, in particular. Such keen environmental consciousness positions Albeshr as a distinctive voice in contemporary Arabic/world ecocritical literature.

Despite the growing application of Bakhtinian dialogism in feminist literary criticism, scholarly attention remains concentrated on Western or female authored texts, leaving a gap in applying this framework to Arabic literature authored by men. By exploring the dialogic structure of the female protagonist’s interior monologue, which constitutes the primary narrative mode in Mohammed Abul Wali’s short story “The Land, Salma,” this study explores how dialogism can illuminate female interiority in male-authored, non-Western narratives where the interior discourse of a female character can enact ideological resistance and reveal complex negotiations of gendered identity. This narrative strategy allows Abul Wali to construct a nuanced, feminist portrayal of a woman negotiating her identity within a patriarchal context. The present paper, through qualitative close textual analysis, argues that Abul Wali uses interior monologue not merely as a psychological device but as a site of ideological confrontation, staging a complex dialogue between dominant cultural narratives and emergent subversive counter narratives. Ultimately, the paper situates “The Land, Salma” within broader feminist debates in Arabic literature, particularly in relation to the dialogic representation of the “woman question,” gendered voice, and ideological heteroglossia.

In recent years, there has been a claim in contemporary dramaturgy about the shift from the state of the nation to the state of the mind. The production of the biopolitical body as the original activity of sovereign power is related to understanding the nature of contemporary human beings and the society in which they live (Agamben 1998). In response to the contemporary questions of citizenship, grief and madness in society, this paper aims at exploring our exposure to death and human catastrophism in the present Capitalocene through selected plays by the recently deceased playwright Edward Bond. Coined as ‘rational’ theatre, his latest productions explore hope and optimism for the salvation of the human being through radical aesthetics and narratives of death. My approach in this paper delves into his concept of social madness as illustrative of the politics of society and evaluates hope as an ontological human characteristic that embraces more inclusive conceptualizations of distributive justice. Following the framework of this analysis, I will approach the literary corpus of this paper, the plays Chair (2006) and Dea (2018), from the lenses of anthropological and hope studies.

The scavengers referred to as Harijans or Methars—belong to that downtrodden subaltern class who are religiously exploited, socially humiliated, economically deprived, and politically unrepresented. Two notable works on scavengers—Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935) and Thakazhi Pillai’s Scavenger’s Son (1975)—depicted the plights of this subaltern group from two different perspectives. In contrast to these two representations of the scavengers, Harishankar Jaladas’s Ramgolam (2019) stands on a different paradigm. Ramgolam, in fact, stretching its focus from the inception of untouchability and casteism, lands in the present-day scenario of Bangladesh, where these subalterns became the worst victims of the modified recruitment policy of the scavengers by the city corporation authority. Taking Paulo Freire’s conscientization as a theoretical framework, this paper analyzes Jaladas’s Ramgolam to argue on the scavengers’ capability to reflect on their concrete objective reality to develop their conscientization (critical consciousness) to resist all exploitation strongly. Furthermore, exploring the three novels on manual scavenging, it attempts to investigate how, without traditional education, these scavengers, through interrogation and reflection on their oppressed reality, can evolve through the four stages of development of conscientization (thematization, codification, decodification, and action) to challenge the authority for breaking the age-old shackles of oppression. Finally, inquiring into the above mentioned points, it examines whether, with a developed conscientization, these scavengers are able to amass strength to raise their voice and form strong resistance, or they are still vulnerable to be violently silenced to speak or resist only “through dying” (Spivak, The Nation 1).

This paper examines the convergence of diasporic identity and postcolonial memory in Safia Elhillo’s The January Children. This poetry collection navigates the emotional and linguistic dislocation of Sudanese identity in transnational contexts. Elhillo interrogates the legacies of colonial rule and forced migration through poetic strategies that foreground the instability of language, the fluidity of belonging, and the persistent search for a sense of home. Drawing on postcolonial and memory studies, the analysis highlights how the poet disrupts dominant cultural narratives through fragmented voices, multilingual expression, and autobiographical elements. Linguistic alienation emerges as both symptom and resistance, reflecting the poet’s negotiation of Arabic and English as sites of identity formation and erasure. The paper argues that Elhillo’s work constructs a poetics of fractured belonging that challenges fixed notions of self, nation, and history. Her verse becomes a space where memory is neither linear nor complete, but iterative and haunted by loss. By foregrounding affective dissonance and cultural hybridity, The January Children expands the discourse on diasporic memory, offering critical insights into the politics of voice, language, and exile.

This study examines Moddhannya [ মধ্যাহ্ন , The Noon], a two-part historical novel by Humayun Ahmed, often considered the most popular Bengali writer of his time, through the lens of New Historicism. Rather than foregrounding monumental events or nationalist figures, Ahmed centers the everyday lives of maids, mendicants, musicians, and marginalized communities amid the upheavals between the 1905 Partition of Bengal and the 1947 Partition of India. Drawing on Stephen Greenblatt’s and Louis Montrose’s concepts of the historicity of texts and the textuality of history, the paper explores how the novel negotiates cultural memory, ideological discourse, and the circulation of power. The study offers a qualitative, interpretive reading that traces recurring motifs across both volumes and relates them to relevant historical and biographical contexts. Moddhannya resists linear historiography, embedding historical transformation in rituals, relationships, and shifting norms of gender, class, and belief. Ahmed’s narrative, while deceptively simple in tone, enacts a complex historiographical intervention that both reflects and reimagines early twentieth-century Bengal. This reading not only positions Moddhannya as a significant contribution to Bangla literature but also argues for the inclusion of vernacular popular and historical fiction within broader conversations about literary historiography, postcolonial memory, translation politics, and subaltern voices in world literature.