A Postsecular Look at the Reading Motif in Bahiyyih Nakhjavani’s The Woman Who Read Too Much

Abstract

This article is a work of literary analysis. As such, it analyzes the reading motif in Bahiyyih Nakhjavani’s The Woman Who Read Too Much through a postsecular prism. Nakhjavani’s historical novel, as the title suggests, is densely woven with metaphors that underscore a link between the secular and the sacred through the act of reading. Through the metaphors employed in the novel, the act of reading is shown to be both a material and a metaphysical act. This study owes a significant debt to John McClure’s Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of Pynchon and Morrison.