La corda calata dal cielo: l’importanza del dettaglio nell’esperienza narrativa di Aḥmad Bašīr al-‘Aylah

Abstract

Aḥmad Bašīr al-‘Aylah is one of the most prolific and versatile authors of Contemporary Palestinian literary landscape. He is probably best known for his poetical collections, but he is also a journalist, a novelist, a script editor, a radio producer and a short story writer. In 2016 he published his first short story collection entitled Al-ḥabl allaḏī tadallà min al-samā’ (The rope hanging from the sky), that has never been translated into European languages. The stories included in this work are mainly set in Benghazi, which is the city where the author lives since he was a child, and they focus on the tragedy of war and its disasters, first of all the loss and destruction of houses and buildings. Through an in-depth critical analysis of the work – with a special attention to the methodological introduction and the first short story that gives its name to the whole collection (and here provided, for the first time, with an Italian translation) – the author of the present article examines the main features of Aḥmad Bašīr al-‘Aylah’s narrative experience with regard both to the themes he deals with and to his language and narrative style.