You’ll be mine for ever: the human longing for eternal life in a novel that explores the future

Contemporary writers are used to exploring the “quest for eternal life” theme, al-khulud (immortality), by resorting to the elixir vitae as well as to hibernation and reincarnation, for instance, in order to express the neverending human struggle for overcoming the limits imposed by time. This quest permeates many novels which are pivotal for the emergence of science fiction in Arabic literature. In fact, it is now possible for scholars to underline the existence of a particular type of novel within the science fiction’s genre, i.e. the so-called riwāyat al-istishrāf, which is an attempt to create a link between present and future, where science fiction texts sometimes deal with bio-ethics so as to give voice to the human longing for immortality. This paper will analyse Love Outside the Cold (Ḥubb khārij al-bard, 2010) by the Lebanese writer Kāmil Farḥān Ṣāliḥ (1969). In an imaginary 2032, Beirut is destroyed by an earthquake. After this terrible event, scientific research about the human genome in developed in order to allow the human being a possibility to reach immortality. Desperate love, represented by the hero in search of his beloved in Beirut which is in ruins, and the dilemmas caused by bio-ethics give new life to one of the multi-faceted genres that today characterise the literary panorama of the Arab countries.