The expression of Dual Identity in the Work of Yasmina Khadra

Ce que le jour doit à la nuit: A Cross-Cultural Dialogue between Orient and Occident

Abstract

In Simplement double, Cécile Kovacshazy contends that “with the double, Dostoevsky inaugurates a metamorphosis of duplication: the subject in crisis internalizes otherness while denying it. The reader oscillates between two interpretations.” This notion of a subject in crisis is central to Yasmina Khadra’s Ce que le jour doit à la nuit, in which the figure of Younes/Jonas embodies both unity and discontinuity. The narrative traces the character’s development through the successive stages of his life, where two identities and two worldviews converge, overlap, and generate a paradox. Of Arab origin yet raised among French settlers, he inhabits an inside/outside position at once a peculiar being and a stranger facing the strange host that disrupts established categories and invites a reconsideration of an Orient and an Occident too often conceived as rigidly separate.