al-‘Ankabūt (Il ragno) di Muṣṭafà Maḥmūd: un esempio tra fantascienza e romanzo gotico alla ricerca dell’immortalità

Where does the gothic novel end and where does science fiction begin? According to many critics, in the Anglo-Saxon world this transition is represented by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818); whereas in Arabic literature the bond between these two genres of fiction was probably built by the Egyptian writer Muṣṭafà Maḥmūd, who published al-‘Ankabūt(The spider) in 1965. Focused on the quest for immortality, this work is, in fact, one of the first Arabic science fiction novels. The elixir vitae obtained by the experiments performed in the plot of al-‘Ankabūtbecomes the symbol of yet another battle of man against time.