Us / Them

Even before 9/11, terrorist attacks in the West have raised suspicions of Saracens and/or Orientals as early but usually innocent suspects. Such xenophobia or Islamophobia is not an accidental attitude, argues the author. She examines the East/West dichotomy and tackles the representation of the non-Western Other in Western discourse since the Greco-Roman empire and the impact of the colonial milieu on individual relations. The two novels approached examine the East/ West stereotypical images as well as racial prejudices. The significant aspect of the two novels is that both deal with tensions that result when an Oriental man and a Western woman (or women) tend to closely mix. They interrogate the cultural assumption that a Western woman is at risk in the company of the sexually voracious Oriental man. Then, are East and West gendered? If so, why? Why do both authors intensify the motif of the East as unknowable with the motif of the East as sexually threatening? Are they replacing one colonial myth with another? This work will be both interesting and useful for literature scholars as well as anyone concerned with the East/ West, Islam/ West or Arab/ West interrelations.