Abstract
Ali Bader‘s novel The Lights of Jerusalem” attempts to transfer
the ideas of Edward Said into narrative fiction. Edward Said is the
realistic and central character in the novel who confronts fictional
Israeli characters. This is done in the aim of discrediting the Zionist
version and refuting a narrative fiction that has turned into reality.
Bader was able to convert Said‘ s thesis about ownership transfer,
inventing history by narration” and the idea of ”hybridity and exile”
into a narrative fiction.
The novelist has chosen Jerusalem as the place where the act
of narration is focused upon, using the suitable techniques and
strategies . He used two of the most salient strategies: intertextuality
with all its various forms, since it makes texts converse with each
other, and metafiction with all its critical dimensions and narcissistic
involvements. These are used together with other techniques of
building characters, events, time and place.
The reading focused on intertextuality and metafiction as two
strategies used to analyze the fictional speech.