A Study of Alexandrian City Writing in Edwar Al-Kharrat’s City of Safforn

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of Arabic Language, School of Asian and African Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China

Abstract

Alexandria is the eternal protagonist of Edwar Al-Kharrat's novels. In City of Safforn, Al-Kharrat takes the story of Mikhail, his family and friends as the main line to build a tripartite representational relationship between history, memory and space, through multi-dimensional sensory experience such as touch, smell and hearing, which depicts a panoramic view of cosmopolitan Alexandria before and after World War II. From the perspective of city writing, this paper intends to analyze Al-Kharrat’s love for Alexandria, and to clarify how the street scene, home, and sea representing the historical memory and urban spirit of Alexandria, thus exploring the nostalgia and its significance, and showing the image of Alexandria in Al-Kharrat’s eyes, which is completely different from that of Western writers. Through the connection between personal memory and urban space, Al-Kharrat uses fragmented aesthetics to present the process of historical development and current dilemma of Alexandria, thereby constructing a new paradigm of nostalgic writing.

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