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This paper investigates the literary representation of London as a site of cross-cultural romance by analyzing the effects of romantic relations between Arab women and white men on their identities in the works of Selma Dabbagh’s Out of It (2011) and Nada Awar Jarrar’s Dreams of Water (2006). It aims at examining the city of London as a convenient testing ground for whether Arab women characters could mingle and cohabit with white men as a coping strategy in the Metropolis. As this paper shows, the Metropolis helps Arab women to navigate a sense of identity in these cross-cultural romances. It is within the multi-ethnic and multicultural spaces of Metropolitan London that new intimate possibilities between Arab women and white men begin to emerge, revising and interrogating long-established racial and cultural barriers and boundaries. In other words, this is an attempt to examine how these cross-cultural romances serve to tighten the rift between the two cultures and decode the city’s different spaces. Therefore, the article argues that London’s multiple spaces appear to be a prominent factor in the construction of a social space in which cultural identity can be reconstructed and redefined.

The present article explores the impact of “Things” on the healing journeys of the characters in Syrian American author Jennifer Zeynab Joukhader’s novel A Map of Salt and Stars (2018). It highlights the role of certain “Things” in Nour’s family’s healing process from the traumatic experiences of the Syrian war. The article also sheds light on the war’s reshaping of the objects and the individuals’ relationship with them. The objects that this article investigates are as varied as mundane utensils (a shattered plate), cherished souvenirs (Zahra’s bracelet), and even magical objects (Nour’s stone). Particularly, the article examines the establishment of the close association between the characters and these objects and the impact of this association on the family’s journey towards safety and recovery. For this reason, the present study is situated within the theoretical frameworks of the “Thing” theory and psychological trauma. This article argues that the close association that the characters establish with certain “Things” accompanies them during their grief and traumatic experiences, and subsequently initiates and facilitates their recovery.

The purpose of this article is to examine how Palestinian American novelist Susan Abulhawa appropriates in her novel The Blue between Sky and Water (2015) some of the themes, tropes and motifs that Shakespeare employs in Romeo and Juliet (c. 1596) in order to depict how wars and conflicts turn Palestinian people’s love stories/marriages into tragedies. In particular, love at first sight, the (negative) impact of families on love stories, exile/banishment, use of herbs/traditional medicine, humour and parties that practically turn ominous and fateful are among the themes, tropes and motifs that both Shakespeare and Abulhawa employ to represent love stories/marriages that are embroiled in ongoing violent events. Overall, in its depiction of ‘love and violence’, Abulhawa’s novel appropriates Shakespeare’s greatest love tragedy and shows the conditions under which Palestinians live in Gaza.