Narratives of Mediterranean Space: Literature and Art across Land and Sea presents a comparative analysis of contemporary literary and visual narratives of movement and migration produced in Italian, Arabic and French. It analyzes how these works create a dialogue across the Mediterranean Sea.  By paying attention to the multiple ways in which the Mediterranean is being narrated by contemporary writers and artists, Silvia Caserta aims to propose a reconceptualization of the Mediterranean as a polyphonic space of movement and resistance. The Mediterranean space that emerges from this study is a space that, by virtue of the instability and porosity of its geographical and cultural borders, is able to overcome normative dichotomies between north and south, east and west, local and global. This book proposes the Mediterranean is a fruitful area from which to investigate the wider contradictions of the contemporary global world while avoiding the traps of Mediterraneanism. For this reason, the book highlights the contradictions and dissonances that emerge from reading Mediterranean works, opening up multiple perspectives on the Sea and on the different lands that surround it.

Silvia Caserta is Associate Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of St Andrews, UK. Her research focuses on contemporary Italian literature and culture, approached within the broader cultural and geographical framework of the Mediterranean.  

Chapter 1. What (is the) Mediterranean.- Chapter 2. Narratives of the Sea Contemporary Migration across the Mediterranean.- Chapter 3. Narratives of Land and Sea. The Island, the Boat, and the Lighthouse.- Chapter 4. Narratives of the Desert. Reconfiguring Movement Across the Sahara.- Chapter 5. Conclusion: Re-inventing theOdyssey.