Analytical study in the Novel “Bread on the Table of Uncle Milad” by the Libyan novelist Muhammad Al-Naas

The Libyan novelist Muhammad Al-Naas won the Arabic Booker Prize for his novel Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table in 2022. His novel depicts a traditional social world where people live within its negative and positive dimensions. Yet, it concentrates on presenting the bitter reality the members of the oppressed society experience. It narrates the story of a young Libyan man raised in a feminine house whose experiences at home do not prepare him to live in his tyrannical patriarchal society. His conduct differs from his environment's expectations, destroying his ideas and dreams built on love and simplicity in life. However, the culture and its entrenched traditions prove more powerful, and his powerlessness in this existential struggle creates dangerous intrigues that poison his soul, eventually turning him into a beast with no mercy or pity. This study explores the problems of a society sticking to its traditions by studying Al-Naas’ novel in psychological and social terms; it analyzes the story in a descriptive-analytical method to identify the consequences of modernity and its profound effects in a society subject to interactions between the legacy of its decimated past and the requirements of its present, modern world. Perhaps the most critical finding of this study is the novelist’s ability to interrogate the Libyan tribal and social heritage with remarkable boldness through his simple, eloquent Arabic, saturated with some Libyan dialect and its famous proverbs. Al-Naas tries to attribute the problems of Libyan society to their natural causes.