Utopia, Dystopia, and Digression from Temporal Boundaries in Contemporary Arabic Novel: The Case of Utopia and Mercury

There is a marathon-like race between academic criticism and literary texts as the former attmepts to classify, frame and determine the boundaries of the latter. Yet, the rapid transformation that is taking place at different levels of society upst the majority of frameworks and boundaries. Taking short story as a genre, one is entitled to suggest that freedom is its essential element. It is observable that stories have surpassed all traditional literary conventions in the twenty-first century. For example, modern means of communication such as the Internet, Facebook and others have taken an important role in the field of literary creatation. The Tunisian author Monsef Al-Wahibi, for example, has chosen the category of "Facebook novel" for his Adam's Lover in which we see a Facebook-based communication between a man and woman. Dialogue of Fingers is another particular case in point. Amidst this turbulence of standards, Arabic literature is witnessing innovations and initiatives that are direct or indirect reaction to the events that the Arab world has been going through in this last decade, that is, prior to the so-called "Arab Spring" and the period during which follow it. One these initiatives goes beyond novelistic conventions in that it breaks the chronological order and the historical sequence, and abolishes the boundaries between reality and fantasy, thus entering "science-fiction" as a direct factor in building narratives and developing events. The stream of Utopian and Dystopian of writing should be grounded in this context. This study has selected two particular novels to develop its argument: Utopia (2008) by Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq and Mercury (2015) by Muhammad Rabi. The paper analyzes the narrative technique that transcends the hierarchy of time in narration on the one hand, and creates worlds in which the boundaries between reality and fantasy are blurred on the other hand. Finally, the paper creates a link betwwen the selected case studies and the turbulent political/social situation in the Arab community.