Psychic Occupation: Western Narrative Style in Beer in the Snooker Club and Season of Migration to the North

Abstract

This paper compares how two Arab Novels, Waguih Ghali's Beer in the Snooker Club (1964) written in English, and Tayeb Salih 's Season of Migration .to the North (1969) written in Arabic (trans. by Denys Johnson –Davies), depict Colonialism 's influence on Arab cultural identity through narrators who are Anglophiles. While the Arabic narrative and Western voice interact cohesively, the protagonists of Salih 's and Ghali's  novels experience inter-cultural and internal conflicts which result in self-hatred, physical and identity displacement, political dissidence, and acts of questionable morality. Because both identify with an occupying culture they struggle to find stability, satisfaction or redemption in the excesses and "freedoms " of the West, and in the customs of their native cultures..