“Egypt at the Crossroads: The Chronotope of Nature in Mohamed Elmansy Qandil’s Yaumun Ghaa’imun Fil-Barril-Gharbiyy (A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore)”

Abstract

A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore falls at the intersection between literature and history. It traces its protagonist’s life as it intersects with various historical figures. Employing Bakhtin’s work on dialogic imagination, and Timo Müller’s view that the chronotope could be interpreted along ecocritical lines, I trace the chronotope of nature, and examine its effect on molding the Egyptian identity. Qandil creates an Egyptian-specific chronotope of nature that celebrates environmental elements in their interaction with, submission to, or dominance over the characters’ lives, through a dichotomy of environmental pairs and a balance between the anthropocentric and the ecocentric.