The Political Dimension of the Sniper in Pavel Hak and Nicolai Lilin Novels
Abstract
Thanks to the studies by Martha Nussbaum, Political Science can include emotional facts among cognitive tools. Furthermore, aesthetic turn makes possible to integrate literature to political analysis. In other words, it is nowadays possible to state that literary representation of war can produce ethical response in readers. Nonetheless all depends on rhetoric choices. Both novels – Sniper (France 2001) and Caduta libera (Italy, 2009) - tells about a sniper experience narrated in first person. But narrative choices are different in Lilin – who describes a historical set of new wars (Chechnya) – and Hak – presenting a sketchy landscape, compatible with Chechen war as well as the Balkan ones. The main difference, in facts, is the narrating voice: the main character in Caduta libera matches the author’s war experience and wants the reader to believe the story as true; Pavel Hak emphasizes, instead, the fictional level of narration. This analysis aims to demonstrate that literary choices in Hak are more conductive to an ethical response by the reader.
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