In travel books and Orientalist painting, the Victorian concept of an erotic East as a grand harem with endless potential for pleasure and perversion fueled romantic imaginations, art, and commerce. These racial and sexual stereotypes became vital to imperial designs.

In Imperial Fictions, Rana Kabbani unravels the erotic fantasies and myths that the West has developed about the East over the ages.

Includes a new introduction about modern-day perceptions of the Islamic world.

Rana Kabbani is a poet and translator of modern Arabic poetry. She was born in Damascus in 1958 and brought up in New York City and Djakarta.