1st Edition
The Experimental Turn in the Moroccan Novel, 1976-1989
The Experimental Turn in the Moroccan Novel, 1976-1989 examines the trajectory of the Moroccan experimental novel and makes a link between its emergence in the early-mid 1970s and the Arab defeat in the six-day war with Israel in 1967.
Drawing on works by Muḥammad Barrādah, Abdullāh al-ʿArwī, Aḥmad al-Madīnī, and others, the book contends that the Moroccan experimental novel reflects an historic turning point and transitional cultural landscape. It further shows that the experimental novel laid the ground for a different vision of literature, an important feature of which was the intent to surpass the traditional realist model as executed by Moroccan novelist ʿAbdulkarīm Ghallāb (1919–2017) and Egyptian Nobel Laureate Najīb Maḥfūẓ (1911–2006). This new vision of literature seeks to create new discursive spheres for the treatment of the social and the political.
This book will be an important contribution to debates around Moroccan/Arabic/Maghrebi literature, as well as the field of literary experimentalism more broadly.
Introduction: Mapping al-Tajrīb in the Moroccan and Arabic Novel
Chapter 1: The New Novel in Morocco and the Arab World and the Question of Reception
Chapter 2: Tajrīb (Experimentation), al-Turāth (Heritage), and The New Moroccan Novel: Between Innovation and Imitation
Chapter 3: Aḥmad al-Madīnī’s Zaman bayna al-Wilādah wa al-Ḥulm: Writing the Self and Flouting Systems of Authority
Chapter 4: Muḥammad Barrādah’s The Game of Forgetting: Experimental Multiplicity, Ludic Memory, and Sexual Politics
Chapter 5: ʿAbdullāh al-ʿArwī’s ʾAwrāq Sīrat Idrīs al-Dhihniyyah: The Politics of Form as an Allegory for the State of Crisis
Conclusion
Index
Biography
Anouar El Younssi is an Assistant Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Oxford College of Emory University, USA. His most recent publications include articles in journals such as Tamazgha Studies Journal , Journal of Arabic Literature, and The Journal of North African Studies.
