Annette Damayanti Lienau is assistant professor of comparative literature at Harvard University.
"""For Lienau, the idea that Arabic is a closed language, resisting translation by virtue of its status as the Islamic language of prophetic revelation, is manifestly belied by the modern history of Arabic and its relation to literatures across cultural and linguistic divides. . . . [Lienau] forcefully illustrates that the Orientalist position of Islam’s antagonism toward diversity and Quranic Arabic’s essential untranslatability are rooted not in historical fact but racist fantasy.""---Henry Clements, Public Books"