"شهرزاد من هذا العصر" قراءة تأويليّة في رواية "حكايات اللّيدي ندى" لكلارا سروجي شجراوي

Abstract

The novel Ḥikayāt al-Lady Nada (2019) is a rebellious feminist narrative that aims to deconstruct the norms established by the dominant patriarchal institution. Dealing with socio-political, religious and feminist issues, the novel breaks the traditional norms both in content and literary techniques. It is a complicated symbolic novel that transforms the act of reading into an intensive and rewarding mental process. This paper aims to offer a hermeneutical reading, based on the semiotic approach, in order to explore the novel's symbolic significance and implications. In addition, it will discuss and illustrate the main literary techniques employed in this novel. I argue that features of feminist narrative are manifested in both the private and public spheres. The author presents women's issues and their projection from the private domain onto several general/public axes: national, social, existential, political, religious, in addition to the author's paradoxical situation as a member of a Palestinian Arab community living in Israel. The different places in which the events unfold and the contrasting personalities of the main characters allow us to witness an encounter between two mentalities: the liberal West and the conservative East.