Mapping the Literary: A Spatial Reading of Hilal Chouman’s Kana Ghadan

Abstract

This paper highlights the significance of space as a narrational component capable of opening the text onto various possibilities. As such, the text here is treated as a critical roadmap, able to theorize for itself produce meaning and knowledge. This paper leans on spatial literary studies with its emphasis on thinking about the text spatially through the relationality of spatiality and textuality. Through a spatial reading of Hilal Chouman’s novel, this study revisits the concepts of spatiality and textuality. Such reconsideration is paramount, specifically amidst the recent conjectures in spatiality-literary studies in the Arab world and beyond, with the emphasis on the specificity of the Arab experience.