[with Amy Burge] Girls of Riyadh and Desperate in Dubai: Reading and Writing Romance in the Middle East (original) (raw)

The Routledge Companion to Romantic Love (ed. by Ann Brooks), 2021

Abstract

The Middle East has long held a romantic fascination for the West, characterised by the popular sheikh romance. Yet as Burge and others have argued in these novels Middle Eastern women are often depicted as helpless, veiled, and silent. This chapter approaches romance, gender and the Middle East from a different perspective, analysing two novels written by Middle Eastern women that respond to and challenge the way Western popular romance has represented women and the Middle East. Desperate in Dubai by Ameera Al Hakawai (2011) and Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea (2007) both “Arabic best -sellers”, describe the romantic lives in four women in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, respectively. We argue that these novels are responding, in their own way, to a global genre (romance/chick-lit) that has for decades monopolised definitions of the “romantic Middle East”. By globalising their own local forms of romance through international publications, Al Hakawai and Alsanea are developing a unique form of popular romance that offers a new perspective on the romance genre and the Middle East.

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