Emile Habiby and the Reinvention of the Palestinian Novel: The Pessoptimist in a Post-Realist Context
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 t...
| Published in: | Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies |
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| Authors: | ; ; |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Edinburgh Univ. Press
2023
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| In: |
Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies
Year: 2023, Volume: 22, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-20 |
| Further subjects: | B
Postmodernism
B Emile Habiby B Israeli Communist Party B The Pessoptimist B Departure B Palestinian Resistance Literature B Zionism B Literary Realism B Palestinian Novel B Post-Realism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | 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. |
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| ISSN: | 2054-1996 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3366/hlps.2023.0302 |