Textuality and Metafiction Two Strategies to Analyze the Fictional Speech

Ali Bader‘s novel The Lights of Jerusalem” attempts to transfer the ideas of Edward Said into narrative fiction. Edward Said is the realistic and central character in the novel who confronts fictional Israeli characters. This is done in the aim of discrediting the Zionist version and refuting a narrative fiction that has turned into reality. Bader was able to convert Said‘ s thesis about ownership transfer, inventing history by narration” and the idea of ”hybridity and exile” into a narrative fiction. The novelist has chosen Jerusalem as the place where the act of narration is focused upon, using the suitable techniques and strategies . He used two of the most salient strategies: intertextuality with all its various forms, since it makes texts converse with each other, and metafiction with all its critical dimensions and narcissistic involvements. These are used together with other techniques of building characters, events, time and place. The reading focused on intertextuality and metafiction as two strategies used to analyze the fictional speech.