La “Generazione del 2000” in Egitto: la voce del giovane Muḥammad Ṣalāḥ al-‘Azab nel romanzo Sarīr al-rağul al-īṭālī
(The “2000 Generation” in Egypt: the voice of the young Muḥammad Ṣalāḥ al-‘Azab in the novel Sarīr al-rağul al-īṭālī)
in La rivista di Arablit, a. I, n. 1, giugno 2011, pp. 35-52.
Muḥammad Ṣalāḥ al-‘Azab is one of the most famous representatives of Egypt’s New Generation of writers. Their literary production is characterized by a new kind of writing focusing on social problems, such as poverty, political corruption, religious hypocrisy and sexuality. al-‘Azab’s masterpiece is Sarīr al-rağul al-īṭālī, a novel criticized for the lustful manner in which sex is represented throughout the description of the two main characters. The first one is an Arab youth who seems to suffer from schizophrenia and is not able to establish any social relationship, hence living in a surreal dimension where everything is the product of his own imagination. The novel’s other protagonist is an Italian man strongly convinced that he is the herald of a new religion in which everything revolves around his reproductive organ, considered the “Creator” of a strange world, better than the one he lives in.
