«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

m 161 n Mikhail Suvorov Transformation of the Main Character in Modern Yemeni Prose A s we know, the literary expression of the hope for a better future is usually associated with a character, who is opposed to the existing things, who suffers from them, who rejects them or even fights them. The more indignation and vigor we see in this character, the more hope for changes the author himself expresses and the more hope the book inspires in the reader. From this point of view I would like to trace some transformation of characters in modern Yemeni prose, that occurred in the period from the 1940s up to our days. The beginnings of modern prose-writing in Yemen go back to the 1940s, when after adopting ideas of al-Nahda, some well-educated Adeni Arabs tried themselves in writing short stories of a didactic kind, in general similar to those short stories, that were written in the late 19 th century by some Lebanese authors. The characters in these first Yemeni short stories were endowed with distinctive positive or negative personal features — simply to be examples of what is good and what is bad — and the positive characters always won, which was the expression of the author’s hope for positive changes in the society. Among criticized things there were such matters as early marriage, unequal marriage, illiteracy, ignorance, class prejudices, superstitions, alcoholism, qat- addiction and adultery. In all these cases the author always knew what people should do to make life better and was absolutely sure that people can do this. This didactic style dominated in Yemeni prose until the mid-1950s, when the rapid spread of nationalist and anti-colonial ideas in Aden urged local writers to turn to real social and political issues, and so there appeared profoundly politicized realistic and romantic trends. The revolution of 1962 in the North Yemen and the armed struggle against the British that started in South Yemen in 1963 inspired some authors to start writing short stories, in which they romanticized heroic deeds of their compatriots. In many short