Magical Realism in Palestinian Literature and Folk Tales

Autorentext

Sanabel Abdel Rahman holds a PhD in Arabic Studies, specializing in magical realism in Palestinian literature, from Marburg University. She completed her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Toronto. Her research, teaching, and writing practice center speculative fiction, liberatory imaginations, and Indigenous futurism and hauntology. She is a postdoctoral researcher, essayist, and fiction writer.

Klappentext

This book investigates the manifestations and functions of magical realism in STUDIES Palestinian literature, and folktales, especially in reflecting and challenging the ongoing ramifications of the Nakba.

Since the 1948 Nakba Palestinians have learned to live in two spaces simultaneously: the physical space of their lived reality and one of collective imaginary in which Palestine before the Nakba, and after liberation, exists. Here, Sanabel Abdel Rahman argues that magical realism, as a narrative literary mode, is used to reflect and challenge the distorted spaces of Palestinian existence.

The book analyzes mainly three works of literature: Saraya Bint al-Ghul: Khurafiyya (Saraya, the Ogre's Daughter: A Palestinian Fairy Tale), Bab al-Shams (Gate of the Sun), and al-T.alabiyya C345 (Order C345) while also consulting the folktales from Qul ya T.ayr (Speak Bird, Speak Again). Through these texts (and others) magical-realist figures like ghosts, ogresses, cyborgs, and eco-surrealist creatures that revive Palestinian resilience and (re)connection to the land are investigated within the context of distorted spaces. Magical-realist tropes like dreams that reflect the nightmarish character of the current Palestinian reality, as well as dreams of liberation and future returns, are analyzed alongside genres such as surrealism and science fiction, while highlighting Palestinian agency and unity.

This study is the first of its kind to interrogate magical-realist and folkloric modes in the context of Palestinian literature in order to examine the distorted realities of the Palestinian experience since the Nakba. Drawing on Arabic language works of fiction, the book offers a unique approach to examining contemporary Arabic literary spaces and how these reflect and challenge lived realities.

Inhalt

Preface
Acknowledgements
A Note on Translation and Transliteration.

Introduction.
Chapter 1: Magical Realism.
Definitions and Conceptualizations.
Features and Functions.
Folktales.
Other Genres.

Chapter 2: Palestinian Literature and Distorted Spaces
On Palestinian Life and Arabic Literature
Nakba as Spatial Distortion
Types of Space

Chapter 3: Emil Habiby's Ghosts and Magical Ecologies
Introduction
The Mirror Narrator and the Present Absentee
Returning Ghosts
Surrealism and Mirrors from a Comparative Lens
Magical Realism and Paratextuality
Metamorphosis and Anthropomorphism
Surrealism and Animism

Chapter 4: Khoury's Gates of the Sun: Memory and Nightmare Spaces
Introduction
Caves and Conflation
Spatial and Temporal Distortions.
Ghosts and the Living-Dead
Eco-Surrealism and the Grotesque.

Chapter 5: Hlewa's Gothicism, Hauntings, and Cyborgs.
Introduction.
Ghost Narrators and Distorted Bodies.
Animism and Corporeal Distortion
Posthumanism and the Cyborg
Eco-Surrealism
Monstrous Geographies
Ghouls and Zombies
Conclusion: Portals to Hope