The Novel “A Passage to the Other Bank”: A Study in Criminal Criticism

Abstract

This research deals with the problem of printing “A Passage to the Other Bank “novel which was printed in more than one edition, and also having more than one author, namely “Ahmed Al-Baqiri” and “Aqeel Habash”, where the second author of this novel claims that the first one stole it from him. So, the aim of this research was to investigate who was the real author of “A Passage to the Other Bank” novel, which was printed in 2004 AD.

This investigation had been done according to a critical approach that I called “Criminal Criticism”. I did not find any other research or book related to the printing problem of this novel, so I consider it as a new issue, where I tried to record three demands, the first was a general one about some of the research peculiarities, then a second demand to discusses the concept of “Criminal Criticism”, and a last demand to examine the patterns of investigation and the stolen text which included textual evidences, documentary evidences, and expressive techniques.

Actually, I have reached an important conclusion that “A Passage to the Other Bank” novel was written by “Aqeel Habash” in form of daily diaries in a colloquial style, then it was transformed into a narrative writing by “Ahmed Al-Baqiri”, who naturalized it into a documentary novel.