
The July 31 edition of the London Review of Books has published several interesting articles focusing on two recent books, both of which offer some intriguing insights into the West’s engagement with Middle Eastern Muslim cultures in the twentieth century. As the LRB‘s Roxanne Varzi notes, Gillian Whitlock’s Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit is a fascinating exploration of modern Middle Eastern autobiography, that demonstrates how the genre has been used in Western society as a window into an often inaccessible culture, but perhaps more often is appropriated and commodified by Western culture to serve its own interests. In her article Varzi focuses on the latter phenomenon writing: “You shouldn’t overlook the what Gillian Whitlock in Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit, calls the paratext: the liminal features that surround the text, not just the book’s jacket and typeface but interviews with the author, reviews and commentaries. It is in transit, as commodities, that these narratives, which Whitlock calls ‘veiled memoirs,’ are shaped by and for the public. Whitlock reproduces an Audi ad that shows , outfitted in a cream suit, floating among shelves of books in a library (a library that contains no contemporary . . .