Abstract:
This paper is an experiment on the Islamic Novel based on eleven novels written in English over ten years. The novels are all based in Kano city and its environs and portray the life led by the Hausa people. The method applied relates the English and the Islamic Novels to show how the former contributes to the latter and how the two differ in the treatment of style and structure, especially where religion, which men characters are very much concerned about, is concerned, and native culture, which female characters are very concerned about.
The findings show that the Islamic Novel has a great deal to contribute to fiction writing even as it draws inspiration from Islamic and Hausa sources. The paper discusses the Islamic Novel from the ways it shares some aspects of fictional writing with the English Novel and from the ways the two forms of literature diametrically oppose each other. Some of the aspects they share include being multidisciplinary and entertaining the reader, while the two literary forms differ greatly on the question of religion, especially in thematic treatment. To that end, the preoccupations of characters are either shown to diverge from religion, as in the English Novel, or bind to religious precepts, as in the Islamic Novel. Whereas individualism is stressed in the former, the latter projects communalism – and thus portrays the individualist character as exclusive, diversionary and egocentric – character traits likely to harm the relations held between characters. Yet, by being neutral, the English language, as a vehicle of literary expression, has a great deal of stylistic devices to offer to the Islamic Novel. This is shown in the analysis of eleven novels written over ten years.
By Professor Aliyu Kamal, PhD (Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Federal University of Technology, Nigeria
