부자(父子)간 서사와 이주 작가의 정체성

Narrative Between Fathers and Sons, The Identity of The Migrant Writer: Hisham Matar’s The Return

The 2011 Libyan Revolution brought a huge wave of democratization, and there is a phenomenon of migrants returning to Libya to participate in this democratization process. This social aspect is also reflected in literature, and Libya’s unique story begins to emerge as a literary work. The Libyan migrant writer Hisham Maṭar's representative work The Return is just that. This work is the story of a son who returns to Libya in search of his father. And it is an autobiographical text that reveals the identity of the migrant writer. In The Return, Matar uses Western classics like The Myth of Odysseus and The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. He projects these Western Classics into the relationship between his father and ‘I’ to produce an intertextual discourse. This intertextuality is a literary strategy adopted by migrant writers belonging to a minority or marginalized position. Migrant writers experience both the culture of the place of migration and the culture of their home country and write on the boundary. This study examines the relationship in which Matar, the migrant writer, applies intertextuality to the narrative between father and son in The Return. It also illuminates that the identity of the migrant writer intervenes in the process.