An Analytical Comparative Study of Narrative Structure in Contemporary Arabic novels (The novel “Nights of a Thousand Nights” and “The Wandering” is an applied model)

The Arabic novel is the result of global intellectual developments, the emergence and growth of which has been influenced by Western ideas particularly since the mid-nineteenth century. This study attempts to examine the narrative features of contemporary Arabic novels in a descriptive-analytical manner by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information. In the early 1960s, the Arabic novel entered a new phase of development since the late nineteenth century; in the last three decades it has proved its own unique and special linguistic features. This study examines Naguib Mahfouz’s Arabian Nights and Days and Abdul Rahman Munif’s The Wanderer, the two novels which share common narrative features and structures. In order to analyze the story at different, its narrative structure, and omniscient narrator it is possible to apply the traditional narrative method (such exposition, conflict, climax, and falling action), examine the characterization of protagonists, and dialogues between the characters.