As Arabic novels have merged themselves with realism, they have become a medium to express significant issues reflecting the lived reality of Arab societies. Resistance literature also arose following the pivotal transformations in the Arab and Islamic worlds, especially after the setbacks faced by Arab states due to Zionist aggression on Arab territories, particularly Palestine and Southern Lebanon. These transformations tightly linked literature to social and political issues, as lived realities significantly impact literary genres, especially novels. Space plays a fundamental role in constructing a novel, not merely as a backdrop but as a framework that embodies the social reality and geographical and architectural components of villages and cities. The narrative space encompasses the domain where characters emerge and events unfold. It is a vital element in the events themselves, carrying a set of cultural, social, and intellectual values attributed to the characters. This is evident in the works of the Lebanese writer Abdul Majeed Zaraqet. His novel The Path of the Sun is a realistic work of resistance literature addressing social, cultural, and political issues inspired by the bitter reality of Southern Lebanon. It exemplifies the transformations in the region, including oppression, invasion, and displacement endured by the Palestinian and Southern Lebanese people. The author personally experienced this era of struggles and witnessed the Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon, which forced him to migrate from his village to Beirut. This study adopts a descriptive-analytical approach to pinpoint the social reality in Southern Lebanon and examine how the author depicted the features of the narrative space. It analyzes the social components of villages and cities through their geographical types—friendly, hostile, and neutral—and their impact on the novel’s characters, evoking feelings of security, stability, melancholy, fear, or neutrality. All these spaces play a fundamental role in shaping the novel and driving its events, as spatial dynamics influence the psychology, decisions, and conflicts of the characters, especially under the Israeli military’s aggression. Additionally, this diversity in spatial elements adds an aesthetic dimension to the novel’s text.
