Plotting the Unspeakable in Khadra’s Wolf Dreams

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper offers a critical reading of Yasmina Khadra’s Wolf Dreams (2003) evoking important questions on the nature of terrorism in Algeria during the black decade of the 1990s. The novel describes the rise of fundamentalism and how young men are transformed into religious fanatics. This paper is interested in the literary function of terrorism; i.e. how terrorism is used as a literary tool and why this novelist chooses it as a main structuring element. This study offers a more adequate account of terrorism’s figurative aspects, it clarifies the writer’s stylistic strategies and his use of techniques such as narrative suspense, metaphors, and figurative language to respond to instances of violence in this era. The paper also examines ways in which Khadra’s Wolf Dreams can help broaden understandings of terrorism in Algeria. It emphasizes especially the responses to terrorism and considers the status of literature as a way to get knowledge about the atrocities of war. Our objective is to map how Khadra engages terrorism in his novel and uses his literary historical imagination to provide a coherent narrative.