Comment écrire la dévastation ? Documenter, filtrer et réélaborer le réel dans Bawwābāt arḍ al-ʻadam et al-Maššā’a de Samar Yazbik

Abstract

The upheavals that have shaken Syria since 2011 have profoundly impacted the evolution of the literary sphere. This is particularly evident when examining the transformation of the relationship between fiction and reality in the novelistic production of the past fourteen years. While many works published immediately after the revolution aimed to objectively describe the ongoing events, more recent novels have moved away from a documentary approach, towards a more literary narration of the Syrian tragedy. It is precisely this process of reworking reality that this article aims to explore, drawing on Bawwābāt arḍ al-ʻadam (2015) and al-Maššā’a (2017) by Samar Yazbik.

By establishing a dialogue between Yazbik’s 2017 novel and her earlier hybrid-form work, both dealing with the Syrian war, this study first analyses the distinct ways these texts approach reality and fiction, then focuses on the filtering role of imagination in transforming dramatic events into literary material. It also delves into the narrative fragmentation of al-Maššā’a, which formally translates the psychological dissociation characteristic of the traumatized subject. Through this novel, Yazbik sheds the urgency of documentation that marked her writing at the beginning of the revolutionary phase, thereby creating an aesthetically crafted narrative that, far from falsifying reality, allows even its most obscure aspects to become intelligible.