Since its publication in 2015, Miguel Real's O Ultimo Europeu – 2284 (The Last European – 2284) has been celebrated as a stimulating and provocative, critical reflection on our times and the European tradition, knowingly steeped in the literary canon of utopia and dystopia which it explicitly and intertextually evokes, draws upon and plays with, and which critics vie to excavate and reveal; passed over virtually in silence, however, are the many strands of orientalist and racialised invasion and race-war speculative fiction within which the narrative, and its philosophical musings, might better be read.

About the speaker

Abdoolkarim Vakil is a Lecturer in the Department of History and the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at King’s College London. A former head of Department of the Department of Portuguese & Brazilian Studies, he has served on the editorial boards of the journals Portuguese Studies, Journal of Romance Studies, and ReOrient: Journal of Critical Muslim Studies. Abdoolkarim is a member of the Executive Boards of the multi-stranded ReOrient Critical Muslim Studies venture, and of IISRA, the International Islamophobia Studies and Research Association.