Culture, History and Resistance in Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses

Abstract

There has been a trend in literary studies over the past few decades to examine the relationship between literature and history. In this respect, this paper examines how Ibrahim Nasrallah„s Time of White Horses (2012) serves to document and historicize Palestinian annals, and cultural aspects with regard to struggle and resistance against different colonial powers. In this sense, Palestinian historical fiction helps subvert Israeli‟s claims that they settled in a land with no people. Subsequently, this historical novel seeks to resolve the symbolic problem of the invisibility of the Nakba in global culture. By transcribing oral testimonies in its narrative of the destruction of Palestinian society under colonialism, and by studying the historical documents of Palestine, this novel becomes a space to refute and debunk stereotypes and false assumptions of the imperialistic and Western ideological norms and giving them high qualities that prove their capability to rule themselves. On the other, it exposes the falsity of Israel‟s claim to its right to the land of Palestine.