The city as a spatial framework in Yabrā Ibrāhīm Yabrā's narrative

Abstract

The city in which Jabra's fiction is set draws on specific Arab cities, primarily Jerusalem or Baghdad. Jabra tends to make it a symbol of all the new Arab cities. Jabra's short stories are written between the mid-forties and the mid-fifties, period in which he writes his first published novel, A cry in a Long Night (1955). In Hunters in a Narrow Street (1960) he portrays the Baghdad of the late forties until the beginning of the sixties. More than any other novel by Jabra, World without Maps (1982) presents the rise and development of the modern Arab city, to which, in general, he renders a negative image.