What does it mean to belong when the ground beneath you is racially coded and mapped by another’s power? The Politics of Space and Identity in Middle Eastern-Australian Writing: Cartographies of Belonging takes this question to Middle Eastern-Australian writing and discovers that space is never neutral.

Ranging from a hijab-wearing Palestinian Australian woman in Melbourne to an Iranian refugee on Manus Island, and from a Lebanese Australian novelist dissecting Western Sydney’s class divides to a single mother reclaiming her mobility, these authors speak from strikingly different positions. Yet all reveal belonging as a struggle, not a given. Mohsen Hanif argues that home is no sanctuary but a perpetual negotiation, where gentrification, border policy, and patriarchal domesticity shape sense of belonging to places. Bridging literary criticism and human geography with clarity and theoretical nerve, this book will appeal to anyone who thinks that multiculturalism’s positive surface covers different sides that require a closer look.

Mohsen Hanif, associate professor at Kharazmi University, Tehran, works on English, postcolonial, and immigration literatures. His recent articles appear in Neophilologus, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, English Studies in Africa, CLCWeb, The Midwest Quarterly, and English Studies in Canada, among others. He coauthored the award-winning Indigenising Magical Realism in Iran (2019, Persian).