Abstract

The link between space, exile, and memory is central in Inaam Kachachi’s novels and is often expressed through a “poetics of fragmentsµ, which aims to underline the pre-eminence of the subject in interpreting the context and the instability of the categories of space and time. For the exiled, there is no place to return to, but a series of fragments of memory in which the place is deconstructed and reshaped by subjective experiences and by distance. The poetics of fragments is realized, in Kachachi’s writing, through multiple forms. In Al-Nabida (The Outcast, 2018), the letters, the photographs, the articles from old newspapers, and other elements are scattered throughout the novel, forming a subjective archive through which space is evoked. This article aims to examine the role of the exiled’s memory in constructing and deconstructing the space of the nation, paying particular attention to the poetics of fragments.