Narrative Innovation and Intersectional Identity in Fatima Qandil’s Empty Cages and Natasha Brown’s Assembly

Abstract

This paper investigates how narrative innovation intersects with identity formation in Fatima Qandil’s (2025, Empty cages : a novel. American University in Cairo Press) Empty Cages and Natasha Brown’s (2021, Assembly . Hamish Hamilton, London) Assembly , two texts that emerged within different, yet parallel, literary traditions: Arabic and British. The overall purpose of the study is to analyze the ways in which the authors use tools of experimentation such as fragmented narration, memoir-like reflection, and intentional discontinuities to disrupt traditional embodied images of selfhood, memory, and trauma. Based on a theoretical framework that unites narratology and intersectionality, the paper engages in a comparative reading approach that places Empty Cages in the lineage of Arabic feminist and postcolonial literature and interprets Assembly as a scathing indictment of race, class, and institutional bias in modern English literature. Putting these works in dialogue, the study shows how new forms of narrative not only document the disjuncture of identity but also map new practices of belonging to voices at the margins. Finally, the paper contends that the cross-cultural approach of Qandil and Brown contributes to the development of the multicultural literary studies field, reconceptualizing the critical discourse on narrative and identity both in the context of socio-historical and transnational worlds.