Transformations of the Narrator and Narrative Perspective in Shakir Nouri’s Dogs of Gilgamesh: An Applied Narratological Study

Abstract

This study examines transformations of the narrator and narrative perspective in Shakir Nouri’s Dogs of Gilgamesh. Its central problem concerns the frequent conflation of narrative voice with the source of perception, and the resulting confusion between grammatical person, the narrator’s position, and the scope of narrative knowledge. The study aims to identify shifts from a heterodiegetic to a homodiegetic narrator, track changes among zero, internal, and external focalization, and explain their functions in the construction of journey, memory, and the novel’s inverted immortality motif. Using an applied narratological method, the analysis is limited to the jointly published first edition of 2008 (110 pages, twelve sections). Thirteen textual indicators were selected from the opening, the journey sequence, and the ending according to observable changes in grammatical person, narrative level, source of knowledge, or perceptual center. The findings show that a change in pronoun does not automatically entail a change in focalization. The opening section largely employs a heterodiegetic narrator in the third person while remaining internally focalized through Jalal; later sections foreground a homodiegetic first-person narrator. Dialogues and embedded notebooks diversify sources of discourse without necessarily producing fully autonomous polyphony. Finally, the self-reflexive ending separates the narrator from his narrated image and turns narrative reliability into an interpretive question. The study’s originality lies in linking precise terminology to a text-based map of voice and perspective in one novel rather than generalizing across the author’s entire oeuvre.