Studies in

The Arabic novel is the result of global intellectual developments, the emergence and growth of which has been influenced by Western ideas particularly since the mid-nineteenth century. This study attempts to examine the narrative features of contemporary Arabic novels in a descriptive-analytical manner by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information. In the early 1960s, the Arabic novel entered a new phase of development since the late nineteenth century; in the last three decades it has proved its own unique and special linguistic features. This study examines Naguib Mahfouz’s Arabian Nights and Days and Abdul Rahman Munif’s The Wanderer, the two novels which share common narrative features and structures. In order to analyze the story at different, its narrative structure, and omniscient narrator it is possible to apply the traditional narrative method (such exposition, conflict, climax, and falling action), examine the characterization of protagonists, and dialogues between the characters.

Identity is the most challenging subject in the modern world due to the flood of technology in the second half of the twentieth century, coupled with other post-modernist phenomena which have impacted our lives. Ibrahim Nasrollah, the renowned Palestinian author, in a novel titled: Harb al-Kalb al-Thaniah (The Second Dog War) has addressed this challenge through literature. In this novel, he has depicted the future of human life through an imaginary world, using magical realism. The basic concept of the novel is “Simulation”. This phenomenon enters the world of the story and spreads among the people. Day by day the people become more and more like each other and step by step, the fraudulence, violence and conflict in society increase and begin to take over. Through magic realism and using the descriptive –analytical approach to the novel, this paper seeks to study this process as an individual action leads to great human disaster.

Since its emergence, novel has been concerned with the concept of freedom in relation to society. Kurds, Masters without Horses deals with several concepts such as freedom, imagination, society and identity. The Arabic novel, refusing to be pushed into social margins, has become a safety valve that prevents nations from falling into the pit of oblivion. The novel takes place in a complex world where freedom is the concern and goal of literature and identity is the concern of the writer. In this context, the main question concenrs the challenges of the Arabic novel in relation to identity, freedom and history. Is the novel a cultural necessity for freedom? Is it rooted in a cultural need, without which it is impossible to live? Is this the same anti-historical novel crafted by official institutions under the name of the History of the Utopia which is full of lies? Does the novel have the power to speak of the unspoken history and the power to protect the bridges of dialogue that are getting narrower and narrower every day? This article tries to study the cultural issues presented in novel from a critical framework. The novel is a prime example ethnic identity narration as it relates the pains and sufferings of the Kurds. Despite the language of the novel, which is devoid of poetic overtones and decorations, sometimes it tedious and difficult to understand it. The novel contains an implicit appeal which invites the reader to read the novel up to the end. It is a novel that expresses the fate of a nation and the oppression it has received from other countries. As with the protagonist, readers witness the redefinition of ethnic identity in this novel.