| The geographical complexity and cultural diversity of African-Arab nations complicate the process of defining the cultural identities of these nations. Western audiences have constantly blurred the boundaries between African, Middle Eastern, and African-Arab identities because of a lack of understanding of their trans-national aspects, which allows these nations to combine a multiplicity of racial, religious, linguistic, and geographical factors. In literary criticism, scholars like Fredrick Jameson have failed to account for the unique cultural differences amongst these nations, thereby ignoring the presence of various socio-political forces within the indigenous communities such as liberal, conservative, and religious voices. Thus, it is crucial to address the compartmentalized and stereotypical representations of the people, cultures, and geographies of African-Arab countries and account for their pluralistic and hybrid identities. The proliferation of internal divisions and conflicts, as evidenced in the emergence of autocratic regimes, and extremist nationalist and jihadist movements during the postcolonial era, contextualizes the "Arab Spring" that surfaced recently in many African-Arab countries. This research, therefore, focuses on literary representation of African-Arab identities in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Tayyeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North, and Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men. This research focuses on exploring the social, political, and cultural transformation that indigenous communities experience under the influences of external forces (especially colonization) and internal pressures (secular and traditional). Achebe, Salih, and Matar help us reach a deeper understanding of the complexity and plurality of African-Arab identities. These novels attempt to subvert the compartmentalized Western representations of the region by highlighting the unique cultural and socio-political realities of each nation. Although Achebe is not African-Arab, he has long been perceived as foundational to African literature because of his promotion of postcolonial consciousness, particularly resistance to colonial oppression and reinstatement of indigenous cultural forms and modes of expression. |
