Five hundred years following the publication of Thomas More’s
Utopia, the concept of utopia continues to provide fertile ground on which to explore idealised social relationships and alternative structures of power. Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s interpretation, however, is a bleak one, in which the author envisions a near-future Egypt blighted by social and political inequality. Darko Suvin defines utopia as an “imaginary community... in which human relations are organized more perfectly than in the author’s community” (Suvin 45), and certainly this is reflected by the stringent segregation of Utopia from the poverty which surrounds it in Towfik’s novel. While Towfik’s representation is fictional, its themes of extreme neoliberalism, autocratic regimes of power, and social and…
2666 words
Citation: Murphy, Sinéad. "Utopia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 September 2016 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35704, accessed 19 April 2024.]
