Salim Barakat is a Kurdish author, yet his works are highly regarded for their mastery of Arabic. To achieve his impossible goal of presenting a true picture of the dire condition of the Syrian Kurdish communities, sp...Salim Barakat is a Kurdish author, yet his works are highly regarded for their mastery of Arabic. To achieve his impossible goal of presenting a true picture of the dire condition of the Syrian Kurdish communities, specifically the Yazidis’ genocide in his novel The Captives of Sinjar, he resorts to Latin American magical realism and a convoluted writing style. Characters are not what they seem and every natural thing is a sentient being. The narrative traces the ghostly lives and deaths of five captive Yazidi girls and their five ISIS fighter-masters. The protagonist, Sarat, a fictional image of Barakat, is a painter, who lives and works by a secluded lakeside in Sweden. His work is influenced by the horrific imaginations of famous European artists. This paper accents the novel’s deep structure of collective memories of individuals and communities as addressed by the modern philosophers: Theodor Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, and Maurice Halbwachs.展开更多
文摘Salim Barakat is a Kurdish author, yet his works are highly regarded for their mastery of Arabic. To achieve his impossible goal of presenting a true picture of the dire condition of the Syrian Kurdish communities, specifically the Yazidis’ genocide in his novel The Captives of Sinjar, he resorts to Latin American magical realism and a convoluted writing style. Characters are not what they seem and every natural thing is a sentient being. The narrative traces the ghostly lives and deaths of five captive Yazidi girls and their five ISIS fighter-masters. The protagonist, Sarat, a fictional image of Barakat, is a painter, who lives and works by a secluded lakeside in Sweden. His work is influenced by the horrific imaginations of famous European artists. This paper accents the novel’s deep structure of collective memories of individuals and communities as addressed by the modern philosophers: Theodor Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, and Maurice Halbwachs.
