Transgender subjects, fairytales, and red light districts: strategies of subversion in Tunisian women's writing under Ben 'Ali

This article analyses three Arabic novels by prominent Tunisian women writers published in the decade preceding the mass protests of 2010: Mas'udah Abu Bakr's urshqanah (1999), Fa ilah Al-Shabbi's al-'Adl (Justice, 2005), and Fat iyah al-Hashimi's Maryam tasqu min yad Allah (Maryam Falls from the Hand of God, 2009). These novels are interpreted as alternative political discourses that work to expose the methods of regulation and normalisation in Tunisia under Ben 'Ali. While each has a different focus, they share a number of common themes: the tension between the individual and the collective, the intersection of gender with class as a site of disenfranchisement, the effects of a politically oppressive environment on the autonomy of the physical body, and the way strategies of control effect the lived experience of urban space. Based upon the strongly voiced critique embedded in these texts, the writers' notable positions within their own local literary contexts, and the neglect to which their work has been subject in the West and larger Arab world, I ultimately argue for more inclusive reading practices in modern Arabic literature.