Feathers from Heaven: or what the paprika plant said to the hero

• This article discusses some aspects of the 'problem of identity' explored in the novel al-Rish (1990) by the Syrian-born Kurdish writer Salim Barakat (b. 1951), against the background of the typology of history suggested in Bernard Lewis's "History: remembered, recovered, invented" (1975). As a member of a minority community denied their full cultural and political rights, Barakat is arguably particularly sensitive both to the constructed nature of history and identity, and to how the process of remembering, discovering/recovering and inventing works. The article presents a detailed analysis of al-Rish, concluding that the 'problem of identity' is never solved in the work: rather, the novel presents us with an array of partly conflicting, partly complementary identities, while the characters remain caught in a quest for a stable identity that disintegrates like a mirage as they approach it.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

arabisk litteratur

Salim Barakat

identitet

hjälterollen

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)