A Study on Forms of Violence in Azmi Bishara’s Love in a Shadow Zone

Representations of types of violence featuring in modern world literature have been recognized by literary critics as part of the human condition facing incomprehensible conflict-resolution situations. This has been more so in the novel as a popular literary genre. However, not much has been said about the aesthetic representation of violence featuring in the literary works written by contemporary Arab Palestinian novelists. This paper examines the aesthetic dimension of the act of violence as addressed by Azmi Bishara in his novel Love in a Shadow Zone. In this novel, the drama that unfolds through a dream-like love relationship between Omar and Dunia goes beyond the private lives of the two distanced lovers to touch upon the public life of the Palestinians, both natives and refugees. As the two lovers exchange intimate moments through words, thanks to their almost non-stop msn-chatting rounds, the private and the public conflate to relay images of violence rarely depicted in modern Arabic literature. With the least sacrifice of the artistic, much more of the sensational, Love in a Shadow Zone, as an epistolary novel, portrays characters who seem to be straddling the border between past memories recollected to glue the fragmented vistas of a once-intact national identity and future aspirations summoned 10 reconstruct that identity in a world governed by asymmetric power relations where images of violence go unchallenged and unchecked by the indifferent world at large