ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to pay close attention to certain attributes of Ahlam
Mosteghanemi’s 1985 novel Memory in the Flesh and Ahdaf Soueif ’s 1992 novel In
the Eye of the Sun, two works that explicitly demand that we re-examine and
reconsider the unequivocal link between politics and the personal. These two
novels, I want to argue, enact how the political and social are mediated, lived,
performed and experienced through the personal. I have particularly chosen to
concentrate on these two novels as they expose a certain level of introspection
that specifically allows for an exploration of how personal lives and sentiments
are influenced by wider demands and how these demands, be they political or
social, determine personal experience. I do not intend to predict a shift, or even
a new direction, for Arab women writers. As we have seen, the political and the
social have always to some extent been interrogated and reconciled through the
personal and even domestic front. What I particularly want to emphasise here,
though, is the meditative spirit of these works, where an understanding of social
and political events and their impact is only possible through their transforma-
tion into a relationship with a beloved, and specifically, a beloved who dis-
appoints. Not only do the protagonists in these two novels invest entirely in their
beloved, but this beloved also becomes a cipher through which ideals are
tested.2 Memory in the Flesh and In the Eye of the Sun invest heavily in an idea of
love, and show how socio-political contexts influence the very core of personal
relationships.
