ABSTRACT
Since the publication of Sun‘allah Ibrahim’s experimental novella That Smell (Tilka Ra’iha), multiple works of modern Arabic prison literature (adab al-sujun) have depicted the harsh realities of political detention while providing meditations on the act of writing. From early works such as ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif’s East of the Mediterranean (Sharq al-Mutawassit) to more recent texts such as Sinan Antoon’s I’jaam, writing has become one of the key issues in the Arabic prison novel. This chapter analyses the prevalence and effects of such prison-bound metafiction. Metafictional tendencies in Arabic prison literature were both produced by and helped generate the 1960s “experimental shift” in Arabic literature more generally. More significantly, this chapter will argue that the metafictional tendencies in the Arabic prison novel address the phenomena of detention, especially as experienced by the prisoner of conscience, and, at the same time, bring into question the relationship between imprisonment and writing, asking about writing as self-expression and interrogating the power of writing to represent those imprisoned. Such forms of metafiction destabilise narrative closure and transparency while sustaining and sometimes also sabotaging the idea of writing as a transgressive or subversive act, and as an act that may transcend the circumstances of prison.
