Reality Turned Magical: A Comparative Reading in No Other Life by Brian Moore and Over the Bridge by Mohamed El-Bisatie

Document Type : Original Article

Author

English Department, Faculty of Archaeology and Languages, Matrouh University, Egypt

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to conduct a brief comparative study of contemporary Irish and Egyptian fiction from the perspective of magical realism: No Other Life (1993) and Over the Bridge (2006), selected from Brian Moore (1921-1999), an Irish-Canadian screenwriter and novelist, and Mohamed El-Bisatie (1933-2012), an Egyptian short storyteller and novelist. Although these two novels are the aesthetic outcome of two completely different Western Eastern cultural milieus, they seem to share one interesting literary feature in common. The study contends that their authors adopt a marvelous literary genre as a narrative medium only to convert whatever is real into something imaginary. While Moore employs his dreamy landscape of Ganae to reflect upon the painful histories of Haiti, not Ganae, El-Bisatie utilizes the idealistic city of al-Khaldia to divulge the oppression exercised over Egypt, not al-Khaldia. To accomplish such an artistic objective, each novelist resorts to different magical-realist techniques. Such technical devices enable both of them to set up a graphic illustration of reality that represents factual happenings in terms of magical occurrences. This critical achievement led one to infer that the two pieces under study offer a seditious agenda that resists despotism and governmental ineptness whenever they exist.

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References

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