Spazio della memoria, memoria dello spazio nel racconto breve kuwaitiano: Yasquṭ al-maṭar… tamūt al-amīrah di Munā al-Šammarī

Abstract

Munā al-Šammarī is a Kuwaiti short story writer, novelist, screenwriter and journalist born in Kuwait in 1966. Her first collection of stories, entitled Yasquṭ al-maṭar… tamūt al-amīrah (The rain falls… the princess dies) and published in 2012 describes the anxieties and worries of the inhabitants of Fahaheel (Faḥīḥīl), the small town located in southern Kuwait, where the writer was born and lived her childhood and adolescence and forged her identity. In the thirteen short stories that make up the collection, space – which is a ‘space of memory’ – represents not merely a geographical framework but rather the real object of narration. Through the constant dialogue between ‘space of memory’ and ‘memory of space’ the author recomposes her own identity.