“I want you to be a formidable wolf like your father”: Gender dynamics and desert modernity in contemporary Khaleeji fiction

This study examines novels by two contemporary Khaleeji authors and their engagement with desert modernity. Their works challenge the romanticization of the desert in modern Arabic literature as a pre-modern space defined and dominated by men. Examining Amal al-Fārān’s Ghawwāṣū al-aḥqāf [The desert divers] and ʿAbd Allah al-Buṣayyiṣ’s Ṭaʿm al-dhiʾb [The taste of the wolf], both published in 2016, the study aims to demonstrate how desert space is used to question and redefine concepts of belonging, alienation, agency, and gender. Al-Fārān counters the dichotomous representation of male domination/female subordination through female characters who assert their agency in different power structures; similarly, al-Buṣayyiṣ’s Ṣaʿlūk figure reflects the diversified desert community in a contemporary context, shedding light on alienated personas erased from the collective memory of the desert.