A narratological analysis of the novel “Riyam wa-Kafa" by Hadiya Hussein (Case study: focalization and narrator)

Narrative is a non-random but causal and chronological sequence of events. Every narrative consists of components; including the narrator and focalization. The focalization, which was previously confused between the point of view and the narrator, was studied scientifically by the French Gerard Genet as an independent element and caught the attention of writers and researchers. Hadiya Hussein (1956) is a contemporary Iraqi writer. The main subject of most of her novels are social issues with a political approach. She used a variety of narrators and focal points in his novels and was able to narrate various social events in Iraq in different time contexts. "Riyam and Kafi" is one of her novels in which she has used different types of focalization and different ways of narration. This led to the subject of this research. The present research tries to analyze the narrator and focalization of this novel using the theory of Gérard Genet in a descriptive-analytical way. This study shows that in this novel, the events are often viewed from the inner perspective of the focal narrator and other focal characters are almost absent; however, the attitude of the mother's character is the focal point of the narrator's attention. In this novel, the author has used the diversity of the narrator; In fact, the narrator is one person, but the type of narration is a combination of first person and third person narration; that is, the novel is narrated in three ways.