Storied matter and literary creativity in Ahmed Alhokail’s Roads and Cities

Abstract

Literary stories as a means of communication highlight the deep connection between human and non-human entities and the association of matter and mind. Ahmad Alhokail’s Turq wa Mudan/Roads and Cities, a contemporary Saudi novel published in 2019, elucidates the idea of “storied matter” and the creative and narrative agency of non-human entities. This work draws a narrative map of stories that trace the physical map of Riyadh and the neighboring villages of northern Najd. This map aims to connect culture to nature and thus gives insights to the dynamic relationship between places (non-humans) and their inhabitants (humans). Drawing on material ecocriticism, Barad’s agential realism and the question of creativity, this study attempts to investigate the human and non-human “intra-actions” and highlight the narrative agency of places encountered throughout the novel as well as the storied bodies of traditional poetry and storytelling. It maintains that places and nature are vibrant, agentic matter that have the capacity to embody the history, memories and traditions of the inhabitants of Najd region.

Keywords

• culture
• material ecocriticism
• Najd
• Nabati poetry
• nature
• Pre-Islamic poetry