Islamic Literature in Contemporary Turkey: From Epic to Novel » (First Edition)

Kenan Çayir is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Istanbul Bilgi University. His research focuses on Islamic movements and human rights education.

The victory of the young religious politicians of the Justice and Development Party in 2002 and their new pro-European Union stance was proceded by the emergence of new Islamic intellectual, autobiographical, and literary accounts in the 90s. This book explores the changing understandings of Islam by focusing on the Islamist movement’s production of literary fiction since the early 1980s. It contextualizes a close reading of exemplary novels within broader developments in Turkish society. The study sheds light on how the politics of gender, collective identity, idealism, and individual aspirations in a modern context are expressed, generated, and revised through literature.

Lietrature Identity and Politics
• The Turkish Literary Field: A Space of Struggle over Islam, Secularism, and Modernity
• Salvation Novels of the 1980s: Islamic Ideal for a Total Islamization of Society
• Salvation Novels in the Path to Collective Islamic Subjectivity
• New Novels of the 1990s: A Path to Muslim Subjectivity