Every great tale is founded on voyeurism: the Brothers Grimm, the Decameron tales, the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Alice in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Every story that steals our eyes has a shade of voyeurism. In the novel “The Nutshell” by Ewan McEwan, the fetus eavesdrops on the crime of his uncle’s murder of his father and the mother’s complicity with the killer, in a modern replay of Hamlet. In “10 Minutes and 28 Seconds in This World” by Elif Shafak, the murdered woman peeks into her previous life after her death. In the novel “From the Shadows” by Juan José Mias, the hero accidentally hides in a wardrobe to spy on a man and his wife and prevent the former from killing the latter.
Is there such a thing as “voyeuristic literature”? Every great novelist is a great voyeur. There are many famous works that focused on the idea of the hero looking at the world through that look that we call “voyeuristic”: “Inferno” by Henri Barbusse,
"Sleeping Beauties" by Yasunari Kawabata... But if we look at literature, we will find that it is mostly based on this view.
In this book, the writer uses ten words: voyeurism, waiting, memory, dress, revenge, map, play, flight, slowness, and sleep in a very interesting manner, and a smooth narration that captivates us in his enjoyable stories from the first pages of the book.
Muhammad Ismail Zaher graduated from the Faculty of Media, Journalism Department of the Emirati newspaper Al-Khaleej. He is head of the cultural department of the Emirati newspaper Al-Khaleej. He published a book entitled “The Crisis of Arab Awareness between the French Campaign and the American Campaign” in 2004, in addition to several studies published in books dealing with cultural affairs.
