The Discourse of the Pandemic in Postmodern Arabic Fiction: A Study of “Ebola 76” by Amir Tag Elsir

The narrative engagement with pandemics and epidemics represents a distinctive literary phenomenon. In depicting the relentless rhythm of collective death, marked by annihilation, impermanence, and the urgent struggle for survival, writers inhabit sensitive imaginative spaces that convey intense emotions oscillating between the terror of death and the longing for life. This study explores the poetics of fear and profound dread in the narrative imagination of Sudanese physician and novelist Amir Tag Elsir in Ebola 76. It examines the tension between horror and the will to live, the defiance of mortality, and the intricate web of betrayal, hope, and despair shaping human existence in an Ebola-stricken world. The paper further analyzes how these dynamics emerge within the novel’s setting, an atmosphere saturated with sorrow, suffering, and the fragile coexistence of life and death. By examining the symbolic and psychological dimensions of fear, this study interprets how pandemics reshape emotions, relationships, and existential reflections in literature