La narrazione trasparente: una lettura delle opere di Muntaṣir al-Qaffāš
(The transparent narrative:a reading of Muntaṣir al-Qaffāš’s works)
in La rivista di Arablit, a. XI, n. 21-22, giugno-dicembre 2021, pp. 7-30.
The Egyptian writer Muntaṣir al-Qaffāš is considered by Arab literary criticism as one of the most important representatives of the so-called Generation of the 1990s. The aesthetic consciousness of this generation took shape at the time of the fall of the great narratives and the break with the modern, so that it found full resonance with the lack of certainties and the doubting of what was defined as postmodernism. Muntaṣir al-Qaffāš’s work, on the other hand, appears to be a unique and original experience, not easily interpretable through the parameters and the features generally attributed to postmodern literature, even if the ambiguity of the term “postmodernism” is taken into account. After a brief discussion of what is commonly understood as postmodernism, the peculiarities of al-Qaffāš’s work will be examined through the analysis of his two best-known novels, An tarà al-ān and Mas’alat waqt.
