A true "intersection" of Arab women's texts that challenges and rewrites the traditional boundaries of nation, gender, and community. This rigorously documented collection brings together for the first time original essays by leading authorities in the field on nine contemporary Arab women novelists from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine. The work focuses on texts available in English translation and explores with great theoretical sophistication the relationship of these authors' texts to contemporary phenomena of feminism, nationalism, post-colonialism, war, transnationalism, and societal change.