Postcolonial Fiction and Sacred Scripture: Rewriting the Divine?
Sura Qadiri
Legenda (General Series) 1 July 2014

  • ‘This is an important intervention into discussions of the relationship between literary discourses and sacred scripture. Focusing primarily on recent francophone North African novels, Sura Qadiri examines the positions that literary works take with respect to sacred texts, from latent and inadvertent engagements with the divine, to outright assertions of distinction, in which literary forms are construed as anti-doctrinal and subversive of religious orthodoxies.’ — Neil Doshi, French Studies 69.4, October 2015, 566-67

Postcolonial Criticism and Representations of African Dictatorship: The Aesthetics of Tyranny
Cécile Bishop
Research Monographs in French Studies 411 July 2014

  • ‘This is an impressive first book that calls for renewed engagement with established critical approaches and opens up intriguing new avenues of research.’ — Charlotte Baker, French Studies 69.3, July 2015, 430
  • ‘A cultural interpretation that often transcends its focus on the postcolonial project in order to raise important questions regarding the work of criticism more generally... Ultimately, the book is an example of excellent scholarship that leads to a very thought-provoking consideration of the work of critical interpretation more widely.’ — Aedín Ní Loingsigh, H-France 15, November 2015, no. 163
  • ‘Une problématique intéressante et une contribution pertinente construite sur des travaux théoriques majeurs et un corpus littéraire et cinématographique qui demeurent d’actualité.’ — Parfait Bonkoungou, French Review 89.3, 2016, 13-14
  • ‘Indeed, the monograph convincingly demonstrates that the political and the aesthetic interact in complex and often contradictory ways in a fictional text, with Bishop effectively highlight- ing a system by which political readings are inevitably assigned more value in scholarship... A welcome contribution to the field of postcolonial criticism.’ — Kathryn Mara, Research in African Literatures 47.4, Winter 2017, 188-89