Metafiction, sexuality and taboos in Palestinian novel: Maysūn Asadī’s al-Rāʿī wa-fākihat al-nisāʾ (‘The shepherd and the fruit of women,’ 2021)

This study examines the Palestinian metafictional novel al-Rāʿī wa-fākihat al-nisāʾ (‘The Shepherd and the Fruit of Women,’ 2021) by the famous Palestinian novelist Maysūn Asadī. It looks at the various metafictional features and techniques employed in the novel as well as its engagement with three Palestinian cultural taboos, namely sex, politics, and religion. This novel does indeed have some ‘feminist tendencies,’ and can be considered a feminist literary work. More particularly, this study attempts to answer the following questions: What are the metafictional features that emerge in Asadī’s novel? How does the novel represent the Palestinian cultural taboos of sex, politics, and religion? And why should this novel be considered a feminist novel? The study concludes that Asadī’s novel adopts a chauvinistic portrayal of relations with women, including atypical sexual relations, infidelity, and zoophilia. Although the novel attempts to enhance women's status in a patriarchal masculine-dominant society by giving them narrative authority, the overlap between fantasy and reality indicates the absurdity of reality and calls into question its credibility as a realistic reference. Additionally, the novel does not attempt to reconcile with local religions but rather adopts the religion of the colonial ‘Other’ and secularism to which the majority adheres. This is due to the dominance of Israeli culture over the Palestinian minority in the post-military period and the adoption of Jewish Israeli identity among this minority at the expense of their Palestinian and Arab ethnic, national, and cultural identity. Moreover, the novel’s use of metafiction functions to assert the female authorial voice, challenge the hegemony of traditional patriarchal narratives, and frame stylistic rebellion as a direct response to a reality permeated by contradiction and disorder.