Sweet goes so far as to claim that these [ avant-garde] travel writings can at times prove more effective than postcolonial critique because they work by stealth and disguise to unleash a kind of generalized laughter at orientalist assumptions . Fictional strategies, like parody, counter orientalism by showcasing its nonsensical nature, whereas postcolonial theory always risks aggrandizing orientalism through the very operation of critique. While critique takes orientalism too seriously, fiction knows it to be a fantasy ripe for parody. (Jonathan Fardy, A Review of International English Literature, Vol. 51 (1), January, 2020) Sweet avoids the pitfall of generalization and is careful to analyze what sets his many authors apart thanks to his method of simultaneous cultural contrasts (Robert Delaunay), which makes it possible to expose starkly different and oftentimes contradictory portraits of the Orient, including several transnational English-language authorsof the new millennium. (Tom Conner, French Review, Vol. 92 (3), March, 2019) Sweet recognizes that avant-garde principles of formal innovation reinforce traditional orientalist discursive practice while also, at crucial moments, radically altering it (2). Thus, Sweet is not trying to replace critical readings with positive ones but rather to recuperate visions of radical acceptance within moments that also reassert stereotypes. (Kyle Garton-Gundlings, ALH Online Review, May, 2018) Sweet concludes his monograph by arguing how avant-garde orientalism is a type of World Literature that differs from other orientalist literatures through its alternating strategies of aggression and reciprocity as well as its genuine commitment to alterity, the alterity of an imaginary, participatory future . (Joey S. Kim, Postcolonial Studies, February, 2018)
