The study tackles the historiographic metafictional elements of al-
Ghitani’s Zayni Barakat. Even though historiographic metafiction, like
Postmodernism at large, is a Western concept and even though al-Ghitani’s
novel is Arabic-Islamic in many of its aspects, it, nonetheless, employ
several compelling historiographic metafictional styles and techniques. A
great deal of emphasis is placed in Zayni Barakat on reporting or narrating
history, the idea being that history is ultimately as multifaceted,
problematic, subjective, and fictitious as literary narrative. In both, truth is
relative and elusive.
The main issue in the novel, then, is whether history can be told objectively,
clearly, and precisely or not. The answer, mainly indirect (through the
various narrators, through the ambiguity about characters and situations) is
that positivist history is not possible at all. There can never be an overall,
clear picture about either persons or things, that history is subjective: it is
either total fiction, or is immensely fictionalized. Zayni Barakat is,
ultimately, about the impossibility of writing or reporting history
objectively.