Scelte linguistiche e stile nella narrativa di ’Ahmad al-‘Aydi

In 2003 the Egyptian writer ’A|mad al-‘Aydi (b. 1974) published ’An takun ‘Abbas al-‘Abd, a novel that was soon acclaimed as a cult by a large audience of young readers. The portrait emerging from al-‘Aydi’s narrative represents some features of contemporary Cairo where a mad protagonist acts like a postmodern hero who unconsciously unites in himself three identities. This paper examines the linguistic and stylistic choices operated by the writer in depicting mental dissociation inside a society hanging in the balance between a prestigious past, by now obsolete, and a present alienating and subject to strong external interferences. The most significant phenomena found in the text are linked to the concepts of diglossia, linguistic contact, codeswitching, slang, idiotism, and rhetorical figure. A study of al-‘Aydi’s novel by considering these aspects opens the window to an investigation of the Arabic experimental literature over the last years and can explain how and how much different cultural elements of today’s Egyptian urban society are reflected in language and prose.