EMILY DRUMSTA. Ways of Seeking: The Arabic Novel and the Poetics of Investigation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2024).

Towards the end of BSB Cod.arab.464-an autograph manuscript of Zakariya al-Qazwini's (d.1283) renowned book of mirabilia, the Ajaib al-Makhluqat wa-Gharaib al-Mawjudat (Wonders of Creation and Oddities of Existence)-a monster called al-s : ann aja suddenly leaps out at the reader.Until this page, nearly all the illustrations of sentient beings in the Ajaib have been presented to the reader in profile, and/or with eyes pointed obliquely, almost bashfully away from the reader, whose own gaze has been cultivated, seduced, and trained to glisten and glare, precisely God-like, at all the objects of His creation following the order in which He created them.But the s : ann aja looks back: two black, beady, "soft eyes," implanted in a massive orange cranium with wispy hair that rests atop the body of something resembling an American snapping turtle (chelydra serpentina), seize the viewer with a stare at once frightened and frightening.That's not all: the text informs the reader that if another living being looks upon the s : ann aja in the wild, that being will instantly perish; however, if the s : ann aja sees the being first, then it will perish instead.Looking at the "other" is a dangerous game.Yet on the page, in the literary text, the gaze of the monster and the reader coincide, and the effect seems to render both the subject and the object more alive, not less.It is all very disorienting, and that is probably the point: after many pages of pleasurable looking and learning, the s : ann aja arrests the reader and forces him not only to look again, but to reconsider his former ways of seeing and seeking.I was reminded of this enlivening, re-orientation effect while reading Emily Drumsta's Ways of Seeking: The Arabic Novel and the Poetics of Investigation.Superficially, al-Qazwini's book and Ways of Seeking look nothing alike: the former is famous for its rich and colorful illustrations, and is ostensibly encyclopedic; the latter undertakes its quest primarily as a printed text, and excels in the humanistic knowledge production practices of late capitalist Anglophone academia.But