An entertainingly satirical vision of today's academy, in which a woman academic lands, with her cat, in a university, largely populated by males.
Hisland takes place in a fictional universe--the Islands of Ac-Ac, whose pride and joy is the educational institution of Ac-Ac U. Into this traditionally male world fall the narrator and her feline companion. Their attempted integration into this dystopian world leads the reader on a self-conscious and role-questioning journey.
"This comic romp through some fanciful but not entirely unfamiliar groves of academe manages to touch on aspects of academic life ranging from the rhetoric of course descriptions to the hypocrisies of promotion--all perceived from the point of view of a female interloper on hallowed male territory. Members of the large real-life category of female interlopers will take special delight in this wicked yet good-humored satire, but everyone who has ever set foot in an academic institution can enjoy and chuckle at the expertly crafted adventures of M/M and her wise, companionable cat." -- Patricia Meyer Spacks, author of Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind
"Malti-Douglas creates a counter-utopia constructed as a comic-strip through which one can successfully reach the seeming absurdity of any of our institutions or, for that matter, of any human occupation, if one agrees to play her game with a parodic and magnifying counter-mirror. She does it with intelligence, a broad smile, and a lot of fun." -- Etel Adnan, author of The Indian Never Had a Horse & Other Poems
"I could not stop laughing! Hisland brilliantly and hilariously uncovers the essence of the American university scene. It is a beautiful combination of wit and satire." -- Nawal El Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero
"Hisland is imaginative, intriguing, and a very fine read. I read it with enthusiasm and more than a few laughs. The author weaves together several stories simultaneously, and the subtlety of the feminist politics and criticism is extremely well done." -- Zillah Eisenstein, author of The Color of Gender: Reimaging Democracy
Fedwa Malti-Douglas is The Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities at Indiana University. She is the author of several books, including Structures of Avarice: The Bukhala' in Medieval Arabic Literature; Blindness and Autobiography: al-Ayyam of Taha Husayn; Woman's Body, Woman's Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing; and Men, Women, and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics; and co-author (with A. Douglas) of Arab Comic Strips: Politics of an Emerging Mass Culture.
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