| Summary: | The latest collection of short stories by Mu/hammad 'Abd al-Wakîl signals a major shift in contemporary Yemeni literature: from an experimental form, breaking away from both traditional short story conventions and Yemeni reality, to another, more accomplished form, unabashedly mixing traditional short story principles with renewed genre forms. The short story entitled The Vulture Master presents us, from within a traditional narrative structure, with a modern fantasy tale blending in realism, symbolism and poetry, and where the writer deals in his own way with such contemporary literary themes as disenchantment, perpetual captivity, and the duality of dream and reality. Drawing his inspiration from language itself, oral practices, beliefs and popular imagery, the writer, seeking to set his tale firmly in Yemeni reality, manages to transfigure this modern existential experiment.
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