Traumatised Narrators in Hisham Matar's Novels

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20156536
AutoresJohn Kearney (0000-0003-1048-1277), J A Kearney (University of KwaZulu-Natal, autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Volumen30
Número3
Páginas124-148
Fecha de publicación2014-07-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387
EditorialUnisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.1080/02564718.2014.949414
OpenAlexW2026612792
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas9

This article concerns the child-protagonist narrators, Suleiman and Nuri, of Hisham Matar's two novels In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance respectively. Noting how their traumatised experiences relate closely to the writer's own Libyan childhood, the discussion focuses on their use of desperate strategies to cope with, or challenge, their predicaments. Matar's personal awareness of lives marked by “shame, pain and fear”, and the difficulty of imagining a “better reality”, helps to create his awareness of both boys' anguish, especially in relation to their fathers (lost in Suleiman's case; disappeared, like Matar's, in Nuri's). The stages of each narrator's childhood are traced, highlighting how much more self-defeating Nuri's choices ultimately are, despite his life apparently being easier. The greater pessimism of the second novel may reflect a growing awareness in Matar himself of the profound difficulties for Libyans in constructing a new post-Gaddafi vision for themselves

Aesthetics · Anguish · Epistemology · Pessimism · Psychoanalysis · Shame · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Middle East Politics and Society · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology