An Existential Reading of Kanafani' sPlay The Door

Abstract

For all the scholarly attention cntics have directed toward Kanafani' s fiction, little has been said of his drama. Kanafani wrote three plays: only one, The Door (al-Bab), was published during his life in 1964; the second, The Hat and the Prophet (al-Qubba 'ah wa al-Nabiyy), was published posthumously in 1973; and the third, A Bridge Forever (Jisr ila al­ 'Abad), Kanafani seems to have kept in manuscript (Jabra "Obsessions" 9). Considering his untimely death, the paucity of his dramatic production might be one reason why Kanafani' s plays did not receive attention from critics. Furthermore, the large body of fiction he had written and whose praises critics were already singing understandably eclipsed the few plays he wrote. For instance, The Door did not attract attention most probably because it was published shortly after the appearance of his widely celebrated novel Men in the Sun. .