РОМАНСИЈЕРСКО ДЕЛО АБДЕРАХМАНА МУНИФА
ABDERAHMAN MUNIF’S NOVELISTIC WORK

Summary/Abstract: Abderahman Munif (Abd al-Rahman Muni f) is in both his novelistic work and theoretical approach to a novel, one of inevitable figure of contemporary arabic prose literature, the fact little known in our region. By studying his eleven novels, several prevailing thematic entities have been segregated which serve as a reflection of not only Munif’s engaged literary work in the second half of twentieth century, but also as a thematic preoccupations in Arab societies being present to the day. This paper reflects six thematic entities throughout which the author reveals his struggle with realities of an Arab man. They are embedded in Munif’s first novel Trees and Marzuk’s assassination, evolving further in remaining ten novels. Focus may be on a political defeat from the inner perspective, i.e. relation between defeated individual and Arabic repressive regime; then on a transformation of desert life after discovery of oil; or it is alternative history, as well as evoking past for present-day purpose; or unfulfilled love and tragic idealism as its main attribute; then on education and overcoming traditionalistic methods; and finally, focus may be on one of the eternal issues that occupied Arab writers since arabic renaissance in nineteenth century to this day, interaction between East and West, either as a gravitation of Arab scholars toward West or as colonial and postcolonial influences of the West (maneuvers on East by the West). Munif’s novels, written in poetic and plain language, narratively diverse and innovatively woven, together contribute to the development of arabic novel in both thematic and formal sense. On the other hand, his work is not only one of the paradigms of creativity written in history books of modern prose literature, but is also by his current preoccupations and creativeness among the most read in the Arab world.

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