| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This study deals with the short stories of Edward al-Kharrat (b. 1926) during the early stages of his writing career, which officially began at the end of the 1950s. The article will deal with the atmosphere, the contents and the novel aspects of his writing as reflected in his first three story collections, Hitan aliya (High Walls, 1959), Saat al-kibriyaa (Hours of Pride, 1972) and Mahattat al-sikka al-hadeed (The Train Station, 1955-84), against the background of the changes that were taking place in the Arab world at the time, as well as changes that occurred in the concepts and functions of literature and in the strategies of narration. In his move away from traditional narratives that were represented at that time by the novelist Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), al-Kharrat's stories tended more and more to delve into the depths of the soul and to focus on existentialist and metaphysical issues, and, as a result, he was forced into changing his storytelling strategies and reducing external narratives in favor of introspection, dreams and imagination, as well as using language that relied on metaphor and attained a nearly poetic character. All these elements together contributed to convulsing "reality," which in al-Kharrat's writings became different, discontinuous and unclear.
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