The Answer Lies in the Resilience: Cross Cultural Conflict in The Bamboo Stalk

Abstract

The Bamboo Stalk is a daring work which looks objectively at the phenomenon of foreign workers in Arab countries and deals with the problem of identity through the life of a young man of mixed race who returns to Kuwait, his father’s homeland, the ‘heaven’ which his mother had described to him since he was a child.  The novel is written by Saud Alsanousi and he is a Kuwaiti novelist and journalist, born in 1981. He published his first novel The Prisoner of Mirrors in 2010, which won a prize awarded for novels and short stories by young writers. His second novel The Bamboo Stalk won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2013. Receiving this prestigious prize, he became the youngest author to win the prize. Alsanousi raises complicated themes related to religion, discrimination and identity. His sharp criticism of Kuwaiti society particularly in his last two novels is an attempt to inspire a positive change in the way Kuwaitis view both others and themselves. Although many have discussed the complicated themes of culture and identity in  The Bamboo Stalk, a few critics have examined its protagonist’s coming of age journey realizing his identity through reconciling two cultures and hence his bicultural identity.

Key words: Identity, culture, discrimination, conflict, reconciliation, Kuwait