There is a vast archive of Syrian Prison Literature. Shareah Taleghani’s latest book navigates through the difficult narratives focusing on human rights in this genre.
In her latest book, Readings in Syrian Prison Literature: The Poetics of Human Rights (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,2020) R. Shareah Taleghani, assistant professor and director of Middle East studies at Queens College, City University of New York, argues that prison literature led to an “experimental shift” in Arabic literature since the 1960s. Her decade long research on this topic explores how Syrian prison literature changed since the early 1970s until today. Depicting important poets such as Faraj Bayraqdar, she engages with a certain cultural production that does not deal only with art itself but with the political reality in which the authors find themselves in. We discussed her approach to this genre over email.
Tugrul Mende: Why did you decide to write a book about prison literature in Syria?
