Transcultural Identities in Two Novels by Ḥanān al-Shaykh

Abstract

This chapter is devoted to transcultural identities among the universe of characters in two novels by the Lebanese writer Ḥanān al-Shaykh, who lives in London. The novels in question are Misk al-ghazāl (The Gazelle’s Musk, 1988) and Innahā London yā ʿazīzī (This Is London, My Dear, 2001). In these two works, al-Shaykh deals with two different experiences of migration that had a strong impact on Arab societies during the 1980s and 1990s, one being migration towards the Gulf countries and the other towards European metropolises. Although they were published more than ten years apart, there appears to be a dialogue between the novels in the way of representing the effects of migration on the characters’ identity and for the narratological and stylistic choices adopted in the texts. The analysis will centre on the path to identity undertaken by the characters at the heart of these two polyphonic novels, bearing in mind the relationship between identity, space and body and referring to the notion of transcultural identity.