| Summary/Abstract |
This study explores the juncture of home, liminality and counternarrative in contemporary Syrian literature produced after the eruption of the revolution in 2011. As a case study, I examine how Maha Hassan’s Drums of Love and Ghassan Jubbaʿi’s Qahwat Al-General redefine the concept of home through heterotopic and utopic representations of the place. The study demonstrates that in both works a real sense of home proves unattainable. When the protagonists seek a place for themselves in a home that enjoys freedom and justice, the home denies them. Utilising Bakhtin’s notion of polyphony, I investigate how both works represent a multiplicity of oppressed voices in a ‘home’ that imprisons and estranges everyone. Both texts bear global messages, inviting their readers to examine the complexity of the status quo in Syria through subjecting all-encompassing representations of the revolution and resisting oppression to a process of contestation. Finally, I argue that the unattainable sense of home depicted in the novels marks such texts as a part of the enduring legacy of the Syrian revolution and its causes, and thereby they may foreground solidarity among Syrians who continue to suffer the loss of home.
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