A study of Narrative in Abutorab Khosravi’s Asfar-e-Kateban (The Book of Scribes) Through the Lens of Gérard Genette's Narrative Theory

Gerard Genet, a prominent structuralist narrator, has proposed a comprehensive blueprint for narrative texts. He has proposed three aspects of narrative structure in his narrative theory including grammatical time (order, frequency, duration), dimension (distance and focus) and the tone or sound (narrator in three levels: meta-narrative, narrative level and sub-narrative). This study, examines the novel Asfar Kataban, by Aboutrab Khosravi based on the theory of Genet’s narratology with a descriptive-analytical method. The results of this research indicate that the author has created temporal distortion by using the method of flashback. He has slowed down the narration of the story by eliminating and summarizing it, and has slowed down the narration by expressing a descriptive delay. Also, in critical moments, with the frequent repetition of a narration, the importance of the incident has been highlighted, and the novel has reached the meta-fiction level with the multiplicity of narrators and narrations, anachronism, the death of the author and the narrative nature of history.