Khiṭaṭ al-Ghīṭānī: A Non-Official Topographical Chronicle of post-1952 Egypt

In a large part of his literary production, the Egyptian novelist Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī (1945-2015) aimed at rewriting the Arabic literary heritage in order to contest the Western novel hegemony and criticising Gamal Abdel Nasser (Jamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir) and Anwar Sadat’s (Anwar al-Sādāt) authoritarianism. In this study we will analyse his novel Khiṭaṭ al-Ghīṭānī (1981), in which the author narrates the police state and the free market economy applying the spatial organization of the Arab-Islamic genre of topographical history (khiṭaṭ). The novel is built around the theme of journalism as one of the most powerful means of a totalitarian regime.
We will focus upon some relevant features of this work, such as the relation with its premodern architext, the postmodern dimension, the construction of spatial politics in the novel, the dystopian lens through which the author criticises Sadat’s policies, the revolutionary role of Sufism and art. All of these strategies are instrumental to the representation of the oppressive power and also present a challenge to it. Through this novel the author deconstructs the dominant view of history as objective and factual.
Keywords: Khiṭaṭ, Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī, urban geography, authoritarianism, turāth, dystopia, Sufism