Probing Ghassan Kanafani’s Committed Fiction: A Study of Two Novellas

Lana Waleed, Fatima Muhaidat

Abstract


Ghassan Kanafani’s commitment to the Palestinian cause is evident in his various works which handle the predicament of an exiled nation. This paper explores the exodus and its influence upon Palestinians in two of his novellas, All That’s Left to You (1966) and Returning to Haifa (1969). These novellas reflect the fragile position and fractured existence of two Palestinian families experiencing the tragic circumstances of the exodus and its consequences. Leaving homeland under life threatening conditions in the hope of finding peace only leads to a life of misery and uncertainty in refugee camps. Being silenced and marginalized, the exiled are further overwhelmed by feelings of shame and guilt. Loss of land, houses, and family members entails loss of happiness, peace and honor. Tormented by such negative feelings, their losses and their poor living conditions, Kanafani’s characters live in an unhealthy family atmosphere endangering their normal course of life, and rendering them emotionally disturbed. They find themselves disoriented, lonely, haunted by traumatic memories, and at a loss for words.  In fact, the exodus results in distorted sense of identity, disruptions of their family bonds as well as their normal connections to time, space and culture. Neither time nor the boundless horizon seems to bring hope or change for the better. Siding with the oppressed, dispossessed and displaced and speaking for them reflect Knafani’s love of justice, devotion, and care for the underprivileged.


Keywords


Ghassan Kanafani; All That’s Left to You; Returning to Haifa; Exile; Fractured Family Life; Literary Commitment; Arabic Literature

Full Text:

PDF

References


Allaham, A., A. (2009). The short story as a form of resistance: A study of the short stories of Ghassan Kanafani, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Alice Walker (PhD thesis). Newcastle University.

Billig, M. (1999). Freudian repression conversation creating the unconscious. The United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Blackwell, R. D. (1993). Disruption and reconstitution of family, network and community systems following torture, organised violence, and exile (pp.1-15). New York: Plenum Press.

Brodwin, P. (2008). The dialectic of marginality in the Haitian Community of Guadeloupe, French West Indies. In M. Bullock & P. Y. Paik (Eds.), Aftermaths exile, migration, and diaspora reconsidered (pp.55-75). New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press.

del Aguila, J. M. (1998). Exiles or immigrants?: The politics of national identity. Cuban Studies Association Occasional Paper Series, 3(2), 1-18.

Dyb, G., et al. (2008). Traumatic stress in adolescents emotional reactions, peritraumatic dissociation, and posttraumatic stress reactions in adolescents. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 1(1), 63-74.

Hamdi, T. (2011). Bearing witness in Palestinian resistance literature. Race and Class, 52(3), 21-42.

Kanafani, G. (1990). All that’s left to you: A novella and other stories (M. Jayyusi & J. Reed, Trans.). Egypt: The American University in Cairo Press.

Kanafani, G. (2000). Palestine’s children: Returning to haifa and other stories (H. Barbara & K. E. Riley, Trans.). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Keren, M. (2014). The quest for identity in Sayed Kashua’s let it be morning. Israel Studies, 19(1), 126-144.

Kilpatric, H. (1976). Commitment and literature: the case of Ghassān Kanafānī. British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Bulletin, 3(1), 15-19. doi: 10.1080/13530197608705165

Klemm, V. (2000). Different notions of commitment (Iltizām) and committed literature (al-Adab al-Multazim in the literary circles of the Mashriq. Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures, 3(1) 51-62.

Kotaishová, M. (2007). The British mandate Palestine and the consequences of British foreign policy in the Middle East (BA thesis). Masarykova University.

O’ Neill, M., & Harindanath, R. (2006). Theorizing narratives of exile and belonging: The importance of biography and ethno-mimesis in “understanding” asylum. Qualitative Sociology Review, 2(1), 39-53.

Ouyang, W. (1998). A novel in the form of an Ode: The power of Ghassān Kanafanī’s narrative in Mā tabaqqā lakum. Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature, 1(2), 223-231. doi: 10.1080/13666169808718206

Ouyang, W. (2012). Poetics of love in the Arabic novel nation-state, modernity and tradition. Edinburgh University Press Ltd.

Rossbach, S. (2008). On the metaphysics of exile. In M. Bullock & P. Y. Paik (Eds.), Aftermaths exile, migration, and diaspora reconsidered (pp.76-99). New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University
Press.

Saloul, I. (2012). Catastrophe and exile in the modern Palestinian imagination. USA: Palgrave Macmillan.

Selwyn, T. (2001). Landscapes of separation: Reflections on the symbolism of by-pass roads in Palestine. In B. Bender & M. Winer (Eds.), Contested landscapes, movement, exile and place (pp.225-240). Oxford and New York: Berg.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/9807

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2017 Canadian Social Science

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Reminder

  • How to do online submission to another Journal?
  • If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

  • Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/css/submission/wizard

  • Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
  • We only use four mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Canadian Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 

Canadian Social Science Editorial Office

Address: 1020 Bouvier Street, Suite 400, Quebec City, Quebec, G2K 0K9, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail:caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net

Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture