I Write, Therefore I Am : Metafiction as Self-Assertion in Mustafa Dhikri’s Much Ado About a Gothic Labyrinth

Abstract

Metafiction is not only fiction about fiction. It is about fiction in a wider sense including the fictionality of world and self. This essay discusses the provocative debut „Much Ado About Gothic Labyrinth“ (Hura‘ mataha qutiyya) of the Egyptian novelist and screenwriter Mustafa Dhikri, published in 1997. In its labyrinthine accounts of suburban street culture, this writing about writing explores different forms of agency of an intellectual who comes of age within the milieu of Helwan. Blurring all divisions between high and low brow literature, high standard and vernacular Arabic, topoi and taboos, this highly experimental novel may be understood as a poststructualist reading of the wor(l)ds. Fathoming life as writing this text reveals hidden agencies and heterotopias, but it also acknowledges failures and limits, like the body and emotions. It gives evidence of the sometimes joyful, sometimes bitter existential Geworfenheit, the throwness of an artist into writing.