Identity and the Call to History in Contemporary Novels: The Arabian Gulf Novels as a Model

• • 
  • Presentation speakers
    • Tarig Mohammed, Institute for Islamic World Studies, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E

  Abstract:

  This paper discusses contemporary writing methods in novels. It includes an analysis of narratives through historic building and descriptive fiction based on the self description levels taking primacy over the community. The literary work becomes a notation of historical aspects of the society. Within the contemporary writings, we will nominate some dramatic literature within the Gulf region discussing the idea of identity and belonging to the historic local cultures where a conflict emerges between identity and modernity, interfering with the cultural heritage of the region. Elements of growth and prosperity in society created as well new literary facts, formalized in the Arabian Gulf region in modern history elements. Recently, the changes in communities started to create contemporary social changes that challenged the foundations of the existing social visions. This paper is an attempt to read the recent shifts in society through the methods of the novelists of the region. The common question that follows within literary criticism is weather the novelists write about themselves and their society or they write in the abstract way about a fictional vision We’ll look at Tayeb Salih, a Sudanese writer and Mustafa Said – one of his characters.
  This paper focuses on two young women Fatima Al Mazroui and Mariam Al-Shehhi, both valuable novelists. In the Arab communities, women’s writing is surrounded by a lot of questions, tensions and tinged of taboos, perhaps reaching to the point of building a sharp condition, no longer necessarily to describe our Arab societies in the contemporary world. A traditional view on societies is not always accurate when discussing contemporary matters, but it draws attention to the cultural heritage of our societies in the light of our experience and our cultural values. This paper is an attempt to examine the features of historical writing in the contemporary Arabic novels by focusing on identity.

 

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