Revolution and Cien años de soledad in Naguib Mahfouz's Layālī alf laylah
Author's Department
English & Comparative Literature Department
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https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.52.3.0539
Document Type
Research Article
Publication Title
Comparative Literature Studies
Publication Date
1-1-2015
doi
10.5325/complitstudies.52.3.0539
Abstract
This article compares two important political novels of the second half of the twentieth century: the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Cien anos de soledad (1967) (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz's Layali alf laylah (1982) (Arabian Nights and Days). Mahfouz's Layali alf laylah, a modern Arab adaptation of The Thousand and One Nights, offers, I argue, a reworking of the style of magical realism popularized by Garcia Marquez in his masterwork Cien alios de soledad. Examining Mahfouz's inspiration by Garcia Marquez's Cien anos de soledad reveals a connection between two world literatures that reflects the importance of other, non-Western literature to Arab writers. A reading of Mahfouz's novel through the influence of Garcia Marquez's Cien anos de soledad provides an understanding of some of the literary connections between Latin American and Arabic literatures by focusing on Garcia Marquez's mythologizing of Latin American history and Mahfouz's allegory of Egyptian politics in the 1970s.
First Page
539
Last Page
561
Recommended Citation
APA Citation
Nasser, T.
(2015). Revolution and Cien años de soledad in Naguib Mahfouz's Layālī alf laylah. Comparative Literature Studies, 52(3), 539–561.
10.5325/complitstudies.52.3.0539
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_journal_articles/770
MLA Citation
Nasser, Tahia Abdel
"Revolution and Cien años de soledad in Naguib Mahfouz's Layālī alf laylah." Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 52,no. 3, 2015, pp. 539–561.
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_journal_articles/770