The unreal and the experimental in two new fiction movements: “the Egyptian New Novel” and “the Spanish New Light” and their links with Borges

Abstract

In two very different sociocultural contexts, two fiction movements appear almost simultaneously, with many links to Jorge Luis Borges and other commonalities as well. The first movement is the Spanish “Luz Nueva” and the second is the Egyptian “New Novel” or al-Riwāya al-Jadīda. Both movements present postmodernist and unreal /fantastic novels with a high degree of formal experimentation and fragmentation, that are freshly imagined and have a significant metaphysical dimension. The referent of these movements is Borges, whose production has always shown the influence of the Arabic narrative heritage on his craft. This study adopts the “Travelling theory” of Edward Said, in which the Palestinian theorist argues that ideas travel across cultures, peoples, and writers. And in each new context the ideas gain new definitions and lives. Bearing in mind this reflection, we investigate the connections, implications, and affinities between the two movements, taking into account that their writers have not corresponded with each other.