Description
In her first work of fiction, “Burkini”, the Lebanese writer Maya Al-Hajj hides under the veneer of storytelling, saturated with the atmosphere of the event, does not neglect details, does not denounce the characters, and does not deplete the memory, and she does so through the protagonist, a young, educated and veiled painter, who discovers through her paintings the beauty of the body after its veil, to find herself in a tense situation between two ideologies that diverge in the view of women and their bodies, hence the title of the novel derived from “Burka” and ”Bikini.” Hence the title of the novel, which is derived from "Burka" and "Bikini.
And so we enter the text like we enter a magical land, lured by Maya.As if the writer plays the game of reflection in the woman, the intimate core emerges from behind a veil at one time, and from behind a painting at another time “I circle my paintings like a butterfly around itself” Something self-centered that Maya allowed to cross into the intersecting worlds, opening a journey to the infinite, in a glossy language that flows poetically that reveals to us what is beyond the form (the self). In this way, when the secrets are drawn, the intimate atmosphere is evoked through paintings that sleep in depth and shadow, in stillness and in secrecy, destroying the boundaries between memory, imagination and reality and overlapping together to form an artistic painting through “Porcini” to remain a pioneering step and an important addition to the balance of its owner, confirming her position on the Arab novelist's map.
