Volume 7, Issue 2 (2025)
san 2025, 7(2): 43-60 |
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Heydari T. Examining the Manifestations of Absurdism in by Jalal Barjas’s Notebooks of the Bookseller. san 2025; 7 (2) :43-60
URL: http://san.khu.ac.ir/article-1-397-en.html
URL: http://san.khu.ac.ir/article-1-397-en.html
Shahid Beheshti University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Tehran, Iran , T_heydari@sbu.ac.ir
Abstract: (329 Views)
Following the First and Second World Wars, humanity faced fundamental transformations that manifested not only in various forms of material destruction but also on spiritual and psychological levels. This collapse led to a growing sense of global despair, and manifestations of anxiety dominated the collective psyche. This critical situation gave rise to an absurdist outlook on life, to the extent that existence seemed purposeless, prompting fundamental questions about the meaning of life, the purpose of existence, the limits of individual freedom, and human responsibility in a turbulent world. Literature was influenced by these upheavals, paving the way for the emergence of a new trend in literary writing that reflected this crisis and expressed the psychological and existential fragmentation of modern humans in a contradictory world. This trend became known as the “Absurdist Movement”—an intellectual and aesthetic current that drew its principles from existentialist philosophy, particularly the concepts of the absurd put forth by Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and other 20th-century thinkers. This movement found a prominent place in narrative literature, especially in the novel, where writers employed elements of absurdism as a profound aesthetic tool to express the tragedy of contemporary humans and their struggle with a domineering, meaningless world devoid of human values. In this context, this study seeks to examine the manifestations of absurdist thought in the novel Notebooks of the Bookseller (Dafatir Al-Warraq) by Jalal Barjas. This novel won the 2021 International Booker Prize for Arabic Fiction due to its coherent narrative structure and its intellectual and artistic engagement with fundamental existential issues. Using a descriptive-analytical approach, this study explores the existential tensions and the dimension of the absurd reflected in the formation of the main character. The research findings indicate that absurdism is clearly manifested in the loss of the central character’s identity and his retreat into various imaginary identities—a defensive strategy in the face of a collapsed world empty of meaning and human values. This narrative structure reveals the depth of the existential crisis of characters like Ibrahim, Jadalallah, Narda, and others, demonstrating how literature uses artistic tools to articulate complex philosophical issues in a beautiful and impactful form that reflects the concerns and anxieties of Arab humans confronting a reality filled with instability and alienation.
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