A Comparative Study of Content and Structure in the Two Short Novels, Golshyri’s Shãzdih Ehtijãb and Najib Mahfüz’s al Shahhãz

Following the socio-political developments of the world and acquaintance with the works of Western literature, Iran and Egypt, like other countries, began to publish their literary concepts and thoughts. In this regard, the similar political, cultural and social conditions of the two nations of Iran and Egypt have caused an intellectual understanding between the two countries and the result is the closeness of the literature of the two countries. Among these similarities is two novels, Golshyri’s Shãzdih Ehtijãb and Najib Mahfüz’s al Shahhãz, which have similar thematic features such as; stream of consciousness, Surrealism features, and the outward and inward descriptions. The aim is to examine these similarities to obtain a new understanding of the structure and content of these two valuable works in the field of comparative literature. The work is descriptive-analytical and based on the American school of comparative literature. Some of the results are as follows: a) The similar structures in these two novels show that two authors are influenced by the techniques of storytelling in Western literature. B) The strong presence of the characteristics of surrealism in the two novels causes their acceptance in the category of novels of this school. C) Dealing with social conditions such as political and social repression and lack of freedom of expression, is a pretext for two writers to achieve a special style of writing - surrealism and the stream of consciousness to express their intentions.