Description: The first study of Anglophone and Italian novels by Somali diasporic authors, offering a new critical framework for multilingual and transnational analysis of Somali literature.
Brief description: Marco Medugno is Associate Lecturer at Newcastle University, UK, and previously taught at the University of Glasgow. His area of research includes Anglophone and Italian Postcolonial Studies, Comparative and World Literature, Diaspora Studies, Anglophone African Literature, and Afropean/Black Italian Literature. His articles have appeared in From the European South and Italian Studies in Southern Africa, and he is part of the editorial team of Il Tolomeo. He collaborated on the special issue of Tydskrif vir Letterkunde celebrating Nuruddin Farah's 50-year-long career. He has also worked on Dante and the adaptations of the Comedy, authoring a chapter in A South African Convivio with Dante (2021) and the article for Tydskrif vir Letterkunde (2020).
Review Quotes:
"Through vast worldwide intertextual webs of diasporic Italophone and Anglophone Somali writing, Marco Medugno shows how postcolonial fiction exposes erased Italian colonial history, engaging a transnational aesthetic constituted through translanguaged narratives. This study effectively combines close and distant reading to make an important contribution in the fields of postcolonial literature and linguistics, and studies of diaspora and spatiality." --F. Fiona Moolla, Professor of English, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
"With Literature of the Somali Diaspora, Medugno offers a fresh and original perspective for delving into the novels written by Somali diasporic authors in both English and Italian. This ambitious and timely book provides rich materials and insightful critical reflections, emphasizing the urgency of examining the implications of Somali migration across national borders and languages." --Simone Brioni, Associate Professor of English, Stony Brook University, USA "Deeply and imaginatively researched, Medugno's book identifies transnational, translocal, transtemporal and multilingual relations in recent novels by Somali diasporic authors, disclosing intense and sometimes surprising dialogues between writers and traditions that challenge postcolonial paradigms. It offers readers vital instruments for understanding the ways in which literature actually works in global context today." --Jennifer Burns, Professor of Italian Studies, University of Warwick, UK "Medugno's study is particularly valuable because it opens up non-Italian-language works and thereby develops a transnational perspective." --Zibaldone