The Construction of the Symbolic Character in the Arabic Novel

In this early study, the author revisits a question that seems self-evident yet is deeply complex: how is character constructed in the Arabic novel, and when does it exceed its immediate presence to become a sign that points beyond itself? Drawing on narratological and semiotic approaches, the book argues that character is not a reflection of a real being but a linguistic structure that produces meaning within the text.

The author traces how the fictional character turns into a symbol charged with history, identity, and conflict; how its features, actions, and names carry layers of meaning that reach past the story into what lies behind it. It is an anatomy of the mechanisms of narrative representation, and a reading of the vexed relation between the individual and the collective, the manifest and the implied within the fabric of the novel.

This work forms a foundational stone in the author's critical project: in it the methodological tools first take shape that he would later develop as he moved from the structure of the text toward questions of discourse, identity, and memory.

Character in the novel does not exist; it is built, letter by letter, to say more than it appears to say.

The book is written in Arabic; this page presents it for English readers.