LAUSR

Brazil and Nijmeh Hajjar on Australia are particular standouts among the group. There are, however, also themes that are only touched upon in the Handbook tangentially, if at all. It may not have been possible—given that the book in its present form is over 750 pages long—to include everything that might seem relevant, but the reader should not expect to find extensive consideration of issues like influence of Qur’anic narrative conventions or pronouncements on the Arabic novel (though this would undoubtedly have been instructive in the scriptural world of Islamic culture), the rise of popular novelistic subgenres such as science fiction, comics, the detective novel, or horror, the relationship between the novel and other forms of modern narrative like memoirs or biographies, as well as any layered exploration of questions of levels of language and narrative style, even though the novel has had a long and fraught relationship with the issue of whether to use the literary language (fușḥā) or colloquial in dialogue and / or narrative, and it is difficult to reach an accurate assessment of the literary place of the novel in Arabic without some familiarity with this issue. Aside from these minor quibbles, the Handbook should be recognized as a major scholarly achievement. Each essay, apart from the value of the author’s observations and analysis, is equipped with footnotes that sensibly extend the reach of the author’s arguments without becoming mired in mere citation for citation’s sake. Similarly, each essay boasts, in its works cited at the end, a useful list for students and researchers to further explore each subject. While it may not be the best book as a classroom text, it will be a long time coming before the value of each entry as a research resource is superseded.