Scrivere la memoria: corpo, trauma e genealogia nella narrativa di Basma al-Khatib

This article examines the narrative work of Lebanese writer Basma al-Khatib, focusing on the relationship between memory, body, trauma, and female genealogy. After outlining al-Khatib’s broader cultural trajectory as a journalist, children’s author, screenwriter, and fiction writer, the article turns to two of her major novels: Bitter Orange (Burtuqāl murr, 2015) and The Weavers of Eternity (Ḥāʾikāt al-azal, 2025). In Bitter Orange, memory appears as a wound that shapes the protagonist’s perception of herself, her body, and her past. In The Weavers of Eternity, individual pain expands into a transgenerational female history, where weaving becomes a symbolic language of survival, resistance, and transmission. By reading these novels together, the article shows how al-Khatib’s fiction gives literary form to silenced experiences of women, transforming trauma into memory, gesture, and continuity.