Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of Orient

“A provocative and appropriately subversive book.”— The New York Times In travel books and Orientalist painting, the Victorian concept of an erotic East as a grand harem with endless potential for pleasure and perversion fueled romantic imaginations, art, and commerce. These racial and sexual stereotypes became vital to imperial designs. In Imperial Fictions , Rana Kabbani unravels the erotic fantasies and myths that the West has developed about the East over the ages. Includes a new introduction about modern-day perceptions of the Islamic world. Rana Kabbani is a poet and translator of modern Arabic poetry. She was born in Damascus in 1958 and brought up in New York City and Djakarta.