Writing has come face-to-face with a most crucial juncture: to negotiate with the inescapable presence of violence. From the domains of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, this book stages a powerful conversation on questions of cruelty, evil, rage, vengeance, madness, and deception. Beyond the narrow judgment of violence as a purely tragic reality, these writers (in states of exile, prison, martyrdom, and war) come to wager with the more elusive, inspiring, and even ecstatic dimensions that rest at the heart of a visceral universe of imagination. Covering complex and controversial thematic discussions, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh forms an extreme record of voices, movements, and thought-experiments drawn from the inner circles of the Middle Eastern region. By exploring the most abrasive writings of this vast cultural front, the book reveals how such captivating outsider texts could potentially redefine our understanding of violence and its now-unstoppable relationship to a dangerous age.

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Babson College, USA.

Series Foreword
Preface: Violence, East/West
Acknowledgements
0. Zero-World Consciousness
1. Threat: Writings of Betrayal
2. Annihilation: Writings of Cruelty
3. Sharpening: Writings of Evil
4. Deception: Writings of Midnight
5. Rage: Writings of Overthrow
6. Assassination: Writings of War
6.5. Interlude (Of the Factions, of the Barriers)
7. Conclusion (Of Those Who Have Become Jagged): Reckonings of an Eastern Violence
Notes
Bibliography
Index