Formalism in the Service of the Nakba Novel: Sohail Kiwan’s Novel Balad al-ManHus as an Example

Abstract

Russian Formalism is considered one of the most important modern schools of criticism, which came to establish a science for literature based on stable criteria emphasizing the argument that the value of the text lies in its ability to shock the reader with the new thing that comes with it. The new thing does not occur except in its capacity for de-familiarization, namely, transforming the familiar thing into an unfamiliar one, on the level of the linguistic structure, style, form, and method of broaching the subject. The shock and de-familiarization at the core of formalism are among the phenomena accompanying Palestinian literature after the Palestinian Catastrophe/Nakba in 1948. The Nakba was a sudden and shocking event that turned Palestinian life upside down. Sohail Kiwan’s (b. 1956) novel, Balad al-Manḥūs/Country of the Unfortunate (2019), is a good sample of these different forms of expressions, which reveal different patterns of de-familiarizations that do not just describe a change but include a kind of intuition and presentation of the current condition. Additionally, it introduces a vision and a prophecy of what will happen. These patterns are rarely present in other Nakba novels, which are often a kind of documentation of the Palestinian people’s catastrophe.