An unyielding voice: illness and late style in Radwa Ashour's Athqal min Radwa (Heavier than Radwa).

Does late style reflect experience, mastery, and wisdom? Does it represent a culmination of effort and closure—or, as Edward Said affirms, “intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction?” (Late 7) The proposed paper attempts to answer these questions in relation to Radwa Ashour’s autobiography Athqal min Radwa or Heavier than Radwa (2013) and in the light of Said’s theory of Late style. In this context, it aims to examine, through the field of medical humanities, the relation between illness and lateness on the one hand, and style, on the other. Written as it is under the shadow of turmoil and unrest both on the personal and public levels, it offers a rare opportunity to closely examine how Ashour chooses to approach long-standing political, academic and intellectual questions that have always been at the core of her writing endeavor. The paper questions the universality of the features attributed to late style and how far they fit Ashour’s text.