Preface

Summary

IN THIS BOOK I investigate how the literary writing of Zafer Şenocak, SAID, Feridun Zaimoglu, and Navid Kermani—all prize-winning contemporary German writers of varying Muslim backgrounds—intimates a sense of the divine beyond identity and ideology at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and religion.

Şenocak is a poet, translator, essayist, and writer of fiction whose work challenges the dualisms of East and West, male and female, and body and spirit.

Zaimoglu is a novelist, dramatist, newspaper columnist, and painter who varies his writing style and thematic focus frequently in order to explore new areas. For example, he has written in styles influenced by rap music and by the Bible, and on topics including Turkish-German ghetto culture and Martin Luther.

SAID is a native of Iran who settled permanently in Germany after the Iranian Revolution (1978–79) and writes under a pen name to avoid recognition. His poetry, fiction, essays, and radio plays often deal with the themes of exile, love, and spirituality.

Kermani not only writes fiction but also conducts scholarly research into mystical elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. His literary writing, greatly influenced by mysticism, treats topics such as love, death, and everyday life.

Through an engagement with the nondualist aspects of Sufism in particular, these writers contribute innovatively to a broader German cultural trend that foregrounds religion and spirituality. The contemporary relevance of this book's focus on Islam grew as my research developed, and its subject matter continues to be the central focus of many debates in Germany, Europe, and beyond. It remains impossible to keep track of all the plots, both foiled and carried out, that have been linked to Islam and Islamism: Western reports on the Taliban gave way to a focus on Nigeria's Boko Haram; both now have been superseded by the threat of the Islamic State (IS). Islamist terrorism remains an ever-present menace, one that has created some uncanny juxtapositions for me personally: A resident of my apartment block was arrested on suspicion of terrorism, and from my desk I could see the police examining his car. The morning after I had participated in the lead panel on Islam in Germany at the annual conference of the German Studies Association of Ireland, I discovered in retrospect that the attack on the Baclan Theater in Paris had been unfolding during our conference dinner.