When considering the liminal areas that occur in the critical spaces between modernism and postmodernism, Ahmed Elbeshlawy's America in Literature and Film promises to make an important intellectual contribution. Elbeshlawy makes a case for an America that is “more than a country in the imagination of the world” (3). As such he sees America as a nation that exists largely in the cultural consciousness and can be interpreted/reinterpreted, created, and fashioned in many ways. In constructing his argument Elbeshlawy notes that all of the texts he examines “belong to America as master signifier, a trope in literature, and a philosophical concept” (3). The author examines how this fluidity of identity and meaning can be mapped onto specific words and examines the dual meanings that several words carry. For example, when he uses the word “fiction” to describe the castrating power of America, Elbeshlawy notes that the fiction is not only the fiction of writing but also the fiction of America's castrating power. Hence, through the writing of fiction, authors expose the fallacy of American power. Elbeshlawy suggests that the imago of America is built into the founding documents and the earliest writings on America and the concept of American exceptionalism. This idea is as powerful in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as it was when those documents were written. It is this plurality of ideas of what America is that forms the basis for Elbeshlawy's text. The idea that there is no fixed American identity is not new, yet Elbeshlawy places this idea within the framework of the larger conversation of what is the distinction between modernism and postmodernism.

Elbeshlawy's analysis moves into a dissection of a modernist America, primarily created by D. H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka and Theodor Adorno. These two distinct strands, a symbolic America and an America born of perception and representation, are explored in Elbeshlawy's text and are enhanced by the author's grounding in the theories of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek. When he states that the dual nature of the idea of America lies in binary pairs, such as hope–fear and attraction–danger, Elbeshlawy cements his connection to Lacan via the idea of castration and its acceptance (42).

One of the most interesting points in the text is the way in which Elbeshlawy lays out the key ideas of a “modernist perception” of America. He takes a historical approach, starting with a discussion of an essay by James Ceaser, who claims that “European thinkers have seized on the word ‘America’ and made it into something more than a place or country” (15). Elbeshlawy explains that Ceaser's point is perhaps too simple to explain the complex nuances that encompass America. Elbeshlawy points out that “America existed … strongly in the mind of Europe before it became aware of itself as a country” and he suggests that, via the work of John Murrin, “America was created by the word of Britain” (15). Placing the idea (and ideals) of America into a historical period that pre-dates any political or economic power for the country suggests that the plurality of American identity is important for Elbeshlawy's analysis. After establishing this as the base for his text, Elbeshlawy then dives into his psychoanalytical reading of the concept of America and American identity.

Shifting to Section Two of the text the author looks at postmodernist perceptions of the imago of America. Elbeshlawy further clarifies his argument by noting that “texts that perceive America and misrepresent it” are as valid to the discourse of America as those that “perceive how America is misrepresented by other texts” (70). For Elbeshlawy it seems that the idea of misrepresentation feeds into an overall discourse on the plurality of ideas about what America means and how it can be accurately represented. Elbeshlawy's reading of Lars von Trier's Dogville is insightful and shows a great understanding of the film, reading it along Brechtian as well as psychoanalytic lines. Elbeshlawy provides a good case for a text that can “perceive America” while its author never visited the physical place. This perception, according to Elbeshlawy, is as accurate as any other and as he suggests that the entire premise of the film “seems to be to make the anonymous viewer ill-at-ease. For the ‘universal dream of home’, of liberty and democracy … ought to be a gloomy idea” (93). Since von Trier's film about America is built from his own imagination it is a perfect critical subject for Elbeshlawy, who is concerned about imaginings of America and the many imagined Americas. By pointing out the connections between Brecht's Threepenny Opera and The Good Person of Szechwan Elbeshlawy looks beyond the psychoanalytic and places this work within a much broader stylistic context. The author does this by aligning the inhabitants of Dogville as “a society that rhapsodizes over virtue and generosity while its practice contradicts both” (87). This apparent similarity in the works is carried forward to the end of the film and the town's destruction, which Elbeshlawy suggests could be a symbol of “the destruction of America that Brecht seems to have carelessly announced … in 1947” (89). As Elbeshlawy argues, Dogville, “a film that style-wise pays such high homage to Brecht, his works, his ideology, and his life, is obviously a work that tries to mutilate the image of America” (89, original emphasis). It is this attempt at mutilation that connects directly back to Lacan's theories on castration, and through a mutilation of the “image of America” this film creates another in a series of Americas that exist simultaneously in the conscience of modernist and postmodernist authors and theorists.

Elbeshlawy comes to the conclusion that “America remains both an ultimate destination as well as an unrealized – even undefined – idea” (146). Yet through his psychoanalytic interrogation of America he articulates some interesting theories about what modernist and postmodernist America could be. And while the idea of a plurality of Americas is not new, Elbeshlawy provides significant evidence for this idea. In addition, his readings of core modern and postmodern texts provide key insight into the continued relevance of Lacan and Žižek with regard to current American studies.