Menu
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 6, Number 4. October 2022 Pp.142-151
Department of English, Faculty of Letters and Languages
University of Oran 2 Mohamed Ben Ahmed Oran, Algeria
This paper explores The Returning, which is a short story written by Ahdaf Soueif. The Returning is selected from the author’s first collection of short stories entitled Aisha which was written in 1983. It is Soueif’s first fictional work. This paper focuses on the way the author depicts her female protagonist named, Aisha, as a nostalgic character. Aisha revisits her past and bumps into lost memories with her husband. Soueif also portrays Aisha’s transformation into a liberated and liberating female character. Aisha transcends time and the clutches of her past to claim a fresh start. This paper attempts to reveal how the author focuses on her protagonist’s memory and journey throughout her past, returning to the present. It also focuses on the author’s utilization of time-shift technique to depict her protagonist’s set-forth liberation and that of her story from oblivion and the chains of a lost past. This paper reveals an alternative vision of female characters detached from clichéd female portraits. It also unwinds creative images of time as flexible and co-existing entities; past, present, and future.
Brahimi, S. (2022). Soueif’s Aisha: A Portrait of Memory, Time, and Liberation . Arab World English
Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 6 (4) 142-151.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol6no4.10
Ballantyne, Sh. (1975). Norma Jean, the Termite Queen. New York: Knopf Doubleday.
Bishara, H. (2022). Ahdāf Soueif Makes a Map for Love: A Reality or a Fantasy Through the Meeting of Civilizations and Times? A Dialectic Vision in the Novel The Map of Love by the Egyptian Novelist. European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 10(4), 13-36
Chambers, C. (2011). British Muslim Fictions. Interviews with Contemporary Writers. Palgrave & MacMillan.
Currie, M. (2007). About time: Narrative, Fiction and the Philosophy of Time. Edinburgh University Press. Retrieved from https://ia800206.us.archive.org/7/items/about_time/about_time.pdf
Darraj, S. M. (2003). Narrating England and Egypt: The Hybrid Fiction of Ahdaf Soueif. Studies in the Humanities, 30 (1), 91-107.
Davis, P. (1995). About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution, Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Gauch, S. (2007). Liberating Shahrazad. Feminism, Postcolonialism, and Islam. University of Minnesota Press.
Greene, G. (1991). Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory. Signs, 16 (2), 290-321.
Kearney, R. (1998). The Wake of the Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Lodge, D. (1992). The Art of Fiction. London: Penguin Books
Lucas, J. R. (1989) The Future: An essay on god, temporality and Truth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Luo, Sh. (2003). Rewriting Travel: Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love and Bharati Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World. Journal of Common Wealth Literature, 38 (2), 77-104.
Mac Kay, N. (1983). An Interview with Tony Morrison. Contemporary Literature, 24 (4), 413-429. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208128. Doi.org/10.2307/1208128.
Malti-Douglas, F. (1995). Men, Women, and God (s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminism Poetics. Berkley: University of California Press.
Mitchell, W.J.T. (1981). On narrative. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Ouyang, Wen-Chin. (2003). Metamorphoses of Scheherazade in Literature and Film. School for Oriental and African Studies, 66 (3), 402-418.
Rabinowitz, P. (1987). Eccentric Memories: A Conversation with Maxine Hong Kingston. Michigan Quarterly Review, 26 (1), 177-87
Soueif, A. (1983). Aisha. London: Black Swan
Soueif, A. (1993). In The Eye of the Sun. London: Bloomsbury.
Soueif, A. (2000). The Map of Love. London: Bloomsbury.
Trabelsi, H. (2003). Transcultural Writing: Ahdaf Soueif’s Aisha as a Case Study.
Available at http//social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/V7i2/trabel.htm”
Dr. Samira BRAHIMI is a lecturer of business English at l’Ecole Supérieure d’Economie d’Oran (Oran Graduate School of Economics). She obtained her Ph.D. in Literature and Civilization from the University of Oran 2 Mohamed Ben Ahmed (Department of English, Faculty of Letters and Languages). Her areas of interest include the representations of female characters, time shift, and the use of narrative techniques in fiction works. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5306-1876
Copyright © 2023 AWEJ-tls.org. All rights reserved.