A Study of Linguistic and Narrative Techniques of Mama Hissa’s Mice: Focusing on the Description of Sectarian Conflict

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to analyze the novel Mama Hissa’s Mice of the Kuwait writer Suʿūd al-Sanʿūsī and to identify the messages and themes that the author is trying to convey, focusing on how the writer presents sectarian conflicts. For this purpose, this study first arranges the main motifs and events in the novel to understand the overall narrative and process of intensification and development of conflict between characters. The various narrative techniques, linguistic discourses and symbols used by the author to describe the conflict are dealt with in this study. The study finds that linguistic discourses and symbols used by the characters in the novel to define, otherize, and attack the other sect are based on conflicting historical memories between sects.