bsmall2
> A petrocritic may be someone looking to say something about texts about oil; she may also be looking for oil in cultural places where it is otherwise unspoken or unspeakable, at once too close, too far, and too immense to be immediately perceptible; and she may be looking, in fictions, for the profoundly uneven distribution of oil’s benefits and consequences to peoples and territories around the globe.
> #AmitavGhosh coined.. “#petrofiction”..1992
https://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/petro
#PetroCritic
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Oct 8, 2025 at 12:56amWeb
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> ‘Petrofiction’ is actually a review of the Jordanian-Saudi writer Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt which I describe as a ‘monumental five-part cycle of novels dealing with the history of oil.’ The review was published in The New Republic (2 March 1992: 29-33) and is also included in my essay collections Incendiary Circumstances (USA) and The Imam and the Indian (India).
> I had no idea that Petrofiction had had this catalytic effect.
https://amitavghosh.com/petrofiction-and-petroculture/
#PetroCulture #CitiesOfSalt #MunifNovels #AmitavGhosh
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Petrofiction and Petroculture – Amitav Ghosh