Before February ends, take a look at some of the new titles from Syracuse University Press published this month.
Labor against the Regime reveals the pivotal role played by activist leaders in shaping a movement’s trajectory in Egypt in the years preceding the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. The book primarily details the labor movement at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra and the State Employees Movement of the Real Estate Tax Collectors, focusing on the daunting odds laborers and activists faced as they fought for concessions. As one of the first book-length studies to comparatively analyze Egypt’s labor activism before and after the Arab Spring, Labor Against the Regime provides vital insights into the changing relationship between workers, social movements, and the pre-uprising political order.
The Irish Bildungsroman provides the first comprehensive study of how this quintessentially bourgeois and European genre was transformed and reinvented by Irish writers from the Act of Union to the present day. Through incisive readings of over two centuries of Irish novels, the volume’s contributors illuminate the diverse narrative strategies Irish authors have employed to depict personal formation within a colonial/postcolonial nation fractured by religion, class, gender, and ethnic divisions. From Maria Edgeworth’s post-Union novels to Sally Rooney’s millennial fictions, The Irish Bildungsroman excavates a rich vein of self-reflexive writing that creatively reworked this genre to expose the fault lines of liberal humanism and imagine new modes of selfhood.
The landmark modern Persian novel, The House of the Edrisis is now available in English for the first time with the publication of the concluding volume of the novel. The conclusion sees the aristocratic Edrisi family watch as their once palatial estate is occupied by a richly detailed cast of revolutionaries and eccentrics and the transformation of the home echoes the aftermath of an unnamed revolution outside its walls. The House of the Edrisis in two volumes offers an unforgettable immersion in one writer’s vision of the perils and pathos of a world remade by revolution.