الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract This study deals with three autobiographies/memoirs by three eminent writers, namely, Edward Said (1935-2003), Amin Maalouf (1949- ) and Radwa Ashour (1946-2014). The books undertaken for scrutiny are Said‘s Out of Place (1999), Maalouf‘s Origins (2004, 2008) and Ashour‘s Athqal min Radwa (Heavier than Radwa) (2014). The study will tackle the similarities and disparities of these books and the link between their being autobiography tinged by fiction. Said‘s memoir offers an evocation of his years in Egypt and the US until he graduated from Harvard. Throughout his life Said experienced exile at first hand and wrote his penetrating memoir to help expose his sense of dislocation which is the result of a particular dispossession and colonization of his homeland. By the same token, Maalouf‘s Origins reveals the family of the author including himself as self-imposed exiles all over the countries of the Globe. The book recounts the family history of the generation of his grandfather and grand uncle. It delves into some thorny questions of Lebanese life at home and in the diaspora such as sectarianism and the dynamics of family quarrels. Though the book is set during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, it reflects modern day life and society. Radwa Ashour‘s Heavier than Radwa adeptly mingles autobiographical events, diary, and touches with fiction writing. Ashour deals with her painful experiences with cancer treatment in the US and takes this as a backDROP to her fight for democracy and resisting the despotism of political and social dictatorship. The daily events of the 25th January Revolution (2011) correspond with Ashour‘s consciousness as a writer and her predicament as cancer patient and intellectual. The ending of the book adds up to its being an elegy of life and death. |