Adnan Mahmutovic
Stockholm University, Department of English, Faculty Member
- noneedit
- Born in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Refugee of war since 1993. Thirteen years as carer for people with brain damage. Ph... moreBorn in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Refugee of war since 1993. Thirteen years as carer for people with brain damage.
PhD in literature in 2010 at Stockholm University. First novel, Thinner than a Hair, published same year by Cinnamon Press.
MFA in Creative Writing from City University of Hong Kong in 2012 and a collection How to Fare Well and Stay Fair published by Salt Publishing.
Ways of Being Free: Authenticity and Community in Works by Okri, Rushdie and Ondaatje published by Rodopi in 2012.
Future in Comics (ed) by McFarland Press 2017
At the Feet of Mothers forthcoming by Cinnamon Press 2020edit
Research Interests:
Following Eric Hayot’s argument that modernity is a theory of the world as the “universal,” this paper traces the “world concept” in Marvel Comics industry (MC) and its synergy with the film industry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe... more
Following Eric Hayot’s argument that modernity is a theory of the world as the “universal,” this paper traces the “world concept” in Marvel Comics industry (MC) and its synergy with the film industry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Speaking from the field of World Literature Studies, I show how superhero comics activate the “world concept” through the global dissemination of the infinitely stretchable Marvel Universe. My argument is that by operating in terms of a universe with moldable diegetic rules, the popular culture of MC and MCU does not merely reflect the current state of the world concept, but also affects its evolution and its spread. The universality of the modern worldview has come to be less concerned with the realist effect and more with increasing all-inclusiveness and infinite stretchability. The increased plasticity of the world concept puts a great pressure on world literary ecologies and increasingly expands and shapes what Beecroft called global literary ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The comic book writer Grant Morrison has addressed the question of the animal repeatedly throughout his career, most notably in The Filth, WE3, and the earlier series which is the focus of this paper, Animal Man. Given that comic’s clear... more
The comic book writer Grant Morrison has addressed the question of the animal repeatedly throughout his career, most notably in The Filth, WE3, and the earlier series which is the focus of this paper, Animal Man. Given that comic’s clear engagement with the theme of animal rights, it is odd, as Marc Singer notes, that critics have largely analysed it only as metafiction. This article seeks to readdress this, with particular reference to Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am and David Herman’s work on the representation of animal experience in graphic narratives. It might be expected that Animal Man would provide an example of “how the representation of what it is like for (nonhuman) characters to experience events is shaped by medium-specific properties of graphic narratives” (Herman), but Morrison and artist Chas Truog seem unwilling or unable to exploit the multimodality of comic narratives to deliver an exploration of animals’ worlds. Instead, it emerges, it is exactly Morrison’s use of metafiction which provides his most profound insights into animal experience and animal suffering, because the path which leads to Animal Man’s discovery that he is a comic book character also renders him powerless, and deprives him, like the animal, of speech, an experience of death, mourning, technics, laughter, and crying. This article concludes, therefore, that Morrison’s series dramatises what living is for animals and humans, and exemplifies what Derrida describes as the radical “possibility of sharing the possibility of this nonpower” as Animal Man becomes Animot Man.
Research Interests:
Abstract:Looking at Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia in terms of Saskia Sassen's The Global City, I argue that the dynamic between functionality and dysfunctionality of the infrastructure (Larkin) of... more
Abstract:Looking at Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia in terms of Saskia Sassen's The Global City, I argue that the dynamic between functionality and dysfunctionality of the infrastructure (Larkin) of postcolonial cities in global economies constitutes, in part, the city-as-oeuvre of its citizens (Lefebvre).
Research Interests:
Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has achieved considerable critical and commercial success among a global English readership. Breaking into the US market, which has an important mediating role for the international circulation of... more
Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has achieved considerable critical and commercial success among a global English readership. Breaking into the US market, which has an important mediating role for the international circulation of texts, is a rare feat for a non-Anglophone author and requires some explanation. This paper looks at the rise of Bolaño in terms of major theories on world literature. We find that his success fits into a combination of explanatory models (Casanova, Moretti, Thomsen), but it also reveals interesting mismatches and problematic aspects that show a need to update existing theories. Our analysis, which focuses on the treatment of Bolaño in the American market, shows a great need for transnational forms of analysis across linguistic barriers.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Abstract:Following Cyril Camus's argument that the category of "graphic novel" is defined by its particular use of literary chronotopes, the present paper reads Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen as a treasure trove... more
Abstract:Following Cyril Camus's argument that the category of "graphic novel" is defined by its particular use of literary chronotopes, the present paper reads Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen as a treasure trove of chronotopic arrangements. As a metafictional exploration of its own medium, Watchmen displays a plurality of chronotopes, which is not simply an effect of its postmodernism (Smethurst), but the inherent possibility of graphic narrative. Therefore, with the help of Watchmen, it is possible to both argue for an easy transfer of Bakhtinian theory to the field of comics studies, and highlight the ways in which the unique potential of the medium as such can help us repurpose the theory of the chronotope.
Research Interests:
After meeting at a short-fiction conference, Adnan Mahmutovic and Lucy Durneen began talking to one another about his childhood love of comics and his efforts to preserve them during the Bosnian Wa ...
Research Interests:
The characters are situated in a dissipating social realm that is also being recreated, in particular under the banners of a nation state. Their world can be by and large characterized by the disbanding of traditional communities, nation... more
The characters are situated in a dissipating social realm that is also being recreated, in particular under the banners of a nation state. Their world can be by and large characterized by the disbanding of traditional communities, nation building, religious and ethnic conflicts ...
Hospitalized while on vacation in Turkey, the author encounters a Babel of languages and, in old photographs and smudged bedsheets, traces of a past that both includes and eludes him.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Explores forms of aesthetic worlding and processes of translation and distribution in relation to the spatial and territorial politics of literary practices.illustrato
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Adnan Mahmutovic is fast becoming a literary phenomenon across the Anglophonic world, courtesy a strong narrative voice that is unique and spotlights human endurance in most extreme conditions, including war, ethnic cleansing and survival... more
Adnan Mahmutovic is fast becoming a literary phenomenon across the Anglophonic world, courtesy a strong narrative voice that is unique and spotlights human endurance in most extreme conditions, including war, ethnic cleansing and survival in new places as a refugee. His recent novel Thinner than a Hair is in news; so is the collection of short fiction How to fare well and stay fair. Adnan has a PhD in English literature and an MFA in creative writing, and is currently a lecturer and writer-in-residence at the Department of English, Stockholm University. Fellow writer Sunil Sharma interviewed Adnan by email.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Inside this book bursts a kaleidoscope of characters in historical settings from the Balkans to Scandinavia, which they seek to escape, fit in, or change. Following a few female leads after they leave war-torn Bosnia, this book compresses... more
Inside this book bursts a kaleidoscope of characters in historical settings from the Balkans to Scandinavia, which they seek to escape, fit in, or change. Following a few female leads after they leave war-torn Bosnia, this book compresses simmering emotions ranging from loss, fear, love, hate, revenge, displacement, regret, humor, and hope. Almasa, the main character in most stories, is feisty and funny, and she suffers no fools. She will go to any length to take charge of her broken life and avoid being labeled a victim. Fatima is like her subtler sister, but no less determined to turn the tables on her horrible fate. In between them are pieces of the author's life, as fictionalized as the lives of the two women are real. Each story, although compact and unique on its own, is tied to all other stories, chronologically, emotionally, or thematically. Together they probe the margins of our contemporary history and give voice to people pushed to the edge of life.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
SwePub titelinformation: Reality as an Unfinished Project: A Re-review of The Famished Road.
Research Interests:
Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has achieved considerable critical and commercial success among a global English readership. Breaking into the US market, which has an important mediating role for the international circulation of... more
Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has achieved considerable critical and commercial success among a global English readership. Breaking into the US market, which has an important mediating role for the international circulation of texts, is a rare feat for a non-Anglophone author and requires some explanation. This paper looks at the rise of Bolaño in terms of major theories on world literature. We find that his success fits into a combination of explanatory models (Casanova, Moretti, Thomsen), but it also reveals interesting mismatches and problematic aspects that show a need to update existing theories. Our analysis, which focuses on the treatment of Bolaño in the American market, shows a great need for transnational forms of analysis across linguistic barriers.
SwePub titelinformation: Literature on my Mind.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Salman Rushdie’s work has epitomised diasporic writing since the publication of Midnight’s Children (1981). It is arguable that the question of what constitutes the identity of an immigrant in an already existing diaspora is first fully... more
Salman Rushdie’s work has epitomised diasporic writing since the publication of Midnight’s Children (1981). It is arguable that the question of what constitutes the identity of an immigrant in an already existing diaspora is first fully articulated in The Satanic Verses (1988). However, Rushdie tackles the questions typical for diasporic individuals and communities already in Midnight’s Children. The novel indeed takes place in the subcontinent, but it was written at the time when Rushdie was concertedly negotiating the terms of his own identity in relation to his double cultural heritage. His character, Saleem Sinai, is something of an immigrant when he moves to Pakistan, but then when he goes back to Bombay, the sense of being-out-of-place remains. The most pertinent question for him seems to be that of authentic identity. At the same time, as a writer in diaspora, Rushdie seems influenced by variegated European philosophies on selfhood and identity, in particular some Existential...
Research Interests:
Iconized migrant writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie and Ben Okri use their fictional worlds to articulate the ways in which existential “nervous conditions,” caused by violent postcolonial history, drive individuals to... more
Iconized migrant writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie and Ben Okri use their fictional worlds to articulate the ways in which existential “nervous conditions,” caused by violent postcolonial history, drive individuals to rework the critical notions of freedom, authenticity and community. This existential thread in their works has been largely ignored or left undeveloped in literary criticism. Although Rushdie has argued that they primarily write back to the imperial centre(s), in their signature novels, The English Patient, Midnight’s Children and The Famished Road, these writers also respond to their conflicting cultural and ethnic heritages. They dramatize characters in traumatic struggles with individual and communal identity, belonging and affiliation. As a way of coping with their identity crises, most characters succumb to the political rhetoric of communalism and evince desires for preservation of their original ethnic and cultural identities. At the same time, th...
Research Interests:
SwePub titelinformation: Lars von Trier's Gift [Elektronisk resurs].
Research Interests:
Across generations and genres, comics have imagined different views of the future, from unattainable utopias to worrisome dystopias. These presaging narratives can be read as reflections of their a ...
Zlatan, the golden boy (literal meaning of his first name), must be one of the most famous Swedes of all time, among the likes of Abba and Bjorn Borg. He received the Swedish Golden Ball prize seve ...
Maxime Miranda in Minimis : Swarm Consciousness in Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Research Interests:
Hamid's novelistic project is a creative examination of the relationship between the micro movements of individuals and the macro processes of globalisation. The micro movements of individual human ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by 4.0 license.
Research Interests:
This introduction positions the essays in this special issue in relation to Pascale Casanova's model of inequality and value in the world republic of letters. Arguing that the vernacular has been an overlooked or underelaborated concept... more
This introduction positions the essays in this special issue in relation to Pascale Casanova's model of inequality and value in the world republic of letters. Arguing that the vernacular has been an overlooked or underelaborated concept in subsequent world literary theorizations, the essay then proceeds to discuss the shifting value and nature of the vernaculara concept that only has meaning if it is understood relationally. Both the vernacular and world literature are therefore utilized as heuristic tools, enabling dialogues across entrenched linguistic, cultural and theoretical boundaries. Hence, the unorthodox combination of South African, North American, Indian, Swedish, Russian, Mozambican and Latin American perspectives presented here.
Research Interests:
This is a link to a conference that we (Francesco-Alessio Ursini, Frank Bramlett, Adnan Mahmutovic) organized in Stockholm, 19th and 20th of December 2013. The conference featured a wealth of high-quality papers on the works and themes of... more
This is a link to a conference that we (Francesco-Alessio Ursini, Frank Bramlett, Adnan Mahmutovic) organized in Stockholm, 19th and 20th of December 2013. The conference featured a wealth of high-quality papers on the works and themes of Grant Morrison, one of the most influential comics authors of the last three decades and yet one of the (perhaps) most understudied. The website contains more information on future plans regarding publication issues.