This book analyzes the philosophical voyages of the Muslim self through close readings of 20th century South Asian works in the Muslim modernist, Marxist, and postcolonial intellectual traditions. It demonstrates how the legacies of Marxisms and anti-colonial humanisms have shaped Muslim Anglophone literatures of the present.

The book concentrates on Indo-Pakistani political and literary forms related to subjectivity by writers who lived in Britain, or who are British, such as Muhammad Iqbal, Ahmed Ali, Zulfikar Ghose, Hanif Kureishi, and Kamila Shamsie. Building on Brennan’s new theory of anticolonialism, it emphasizes neglected relationships in both postcolonial and materialist conceptions of subjectivity, such as the dialectic between oral culture and religion.

This book offers groundbreaking and innovative new perspectives, consituting a shift to a new generation of postcolonial studies focused on humanism. It will be of interest to students and scholars in Geography, Asian Studies, Literature, and Cultural Studies.