The Dominance of Place and the Fragmentation of the Self in Ibrahim al-Koni's The Bleeding of the Stone: A Psycho-Existential Approach to Dismantling the Hero's Centrality

Abstract

This study traces the arc of the protagonist Oukheid in Ibrahim al-Koni’s The Bleeding of the Stone, adopting a psycho-existential lens to examine how the self unravels in its confrontation with the desert—a space that operates not as mere backdrop but as an active, even aggressive, force. The desert does not simply contain events; it forges them, pressing upon the psyche and steadily eroding the hero’s centrality until what remains is a self stripped of its former agency. Within this harsh geography, the inquiry delves into the Oedipal undercurrents shaping Oukheid’s inner world, while also drawing out the symbolic echoes between al-Koni’s narrative and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. What emerges is a reading attuned to the blurred boundary between illusion and reality—a threshold where both characters wander, and where the architecture of fiction reveals itself as a space of existential reckoning.