Emile Habiby and the Reinvention of the Palestinian Novel: The Pessoptimist in a Post-Realist Context

Author:

Al-Khadra Wafa Awni123,Hawatmeh Christina Zacharia123,Majdoubeh Ahmad Yacoub123

Affiliation:

1. Associate Professor of Comparative Literature Department of English Language and Literature American University of Madaba Madaba, Jordan

2. Assistant Professor Department of Translation American University of Madaba Madaba, Jordan

3. Department of English Language and Literature University of Jordan Amman, Jordan

Abstract

This article argues that Emile Habiby’s The Pessoptimist (1974) reinvented the Palestinian novel within a new literary genre, post-realism. Habiby’s masterpiece employs a complex, noncommittal narrative that in many ways defies, even eludes understanding, and this is its strength. In order to make the narrative more approachable, this paper attempts to contextualise the novel within a postmodern sub-genre, post-realism, making its more subtle and hidden meanings and dimensions reveal themselves. To this end, the article begins by defining realism and post-realism as literary terms and then pinpoints several key post-realist moments in this highly elusive novel. To deepen the analysis, narrative strategies employed in the novel are compared and contrasted to a similar postmodernist novel, Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952). Ultimately, the article contributes to developing a new sub-genre, post-realism, within the main, mother genre of postmodernism, which can not only be seen as a reinvention of the Palestinian novel, but also be used widely in literary studies.

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Subject

Literature and Literary Theory,Religious studies,History,Cultural Studies

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