Narration’s Speed in the Novel “Harb Al-Kalb Al-Thaniyeh”

“Harb Al-Kalb Al-Thaniyeh”, by Ibrahim Nasrollah, is a fictional novel critics the dictator and warring governments amongst the superpowers. The time and place of the novel are not clear; however, the high frequency of the temporal leaps in the novel from the present to the future and past has caused such elements as “time” and “speed of narration” to gain a lot of importance in narrating the story. The present study uses a descriptive-analytical method to measure the narration pace of the novel based on the theory proposed by Gérard Genette about time and analyze the factors influencing speed and acceleration of the narration. Based on the study findings, the general speed of the narration is positive because it encompasses a very vast and vague temporal span . The narration pace is proved in parts of the story and the author uses such an element as conversation to slow it down so as to retell the hidden and grey angles of the story’s characters to the readers. The author also slackens the speed of narration in some chapters of the story for preserving the novel’s narrative fascination and expanding the volume of the story’s internal world and creation of diverse settings and scenes. He also uses the story characters’ hesitation, retrospective look and episode to create hesitations in the novel’s speed of narration.