The seventy-yard long chain desert (The prose of Ibrāhīm al-Kawnī)

Abstract

Odysseus had already abandoned his young and beautiful wife to begin dangerous travels. He was followed by hundreds of heroes of myths and legends who gave themselves up to the adventures far away from home. But they usually came back willingly to their homeland, while thinking of homeland alleviated the hard life they led in foreign lands. Surprisingly, contrary to this tradition, the travellers in the prose of a Libyan writer Ibrāhīm al-Kawnī (who wrote i.a. a long novel “The Magi” (Al-Maǧūs) and many stories dealing with desert themes) go to the desert and never come back to their families.