1st Edition
Contemporary Somali Diasporic Literature Ambivalent Belonging and Phobic Cosmopolitanism
By Denish Odanga
Copyright 2026
200 Pages
by
Routledge
200 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book considers how the literature of the Somali diaspora deploys themes of ambivalent belonging in cosmopolitan spaces.
The book starts by building a picture of cosmopolitanism thinking from the European Enlightenment through to key postcolonial thinkers like Anthony Appiah, Achille Mbembe, and Arjun Appadurai. However, the book shows that far from a picture of diverse groups... Read more
1. Introduction: Contextualizing Cosmopolitanism and Phobia
2. Conceptualizing Cosmopolitanism and Diasporic Somali Literature
3. Performance Sites for Cosmopolitanisms: Somali Diasporic Literature in Yasmeen Maxamuud’s Nomad Diaries
4. In the Margins of Afropolitanism: Somali Intra-African Mobilities and Anxieties in Jonny Steinberg’s A Man of Good Hope
5. Estranged Guests: Making of a Terrorist in Hassan Santur’s The Youth of God and Nuruddin Farah’s North of Dawn
6. Somali Infidels and Pariahs: Constructed Phobias, Fractured Selves and, Ideal Cosmopolitanism in Ayaan Hirsi’s Infidel and Nomad
7. Conclusion : Phobic Cosmopolitanism, Ambivalent Presence
Biography
Denish Odanga is a DAAD- PhD Fellow at the University of Potsdam, Germany, where he recently completed his PhD in Anglophone literatures and cultures.
