Abstract：As a literary genre, modern Arabic childhood autobiography paved the way for modern Arabic literature and develops its unique paradigm. This paper summarizes the history of modern Arabic childhood autobiography by examining its narrative features and its impact on the construction of Arabic ethnic culture and reaches the following conclusions: Modern Arabic autobiographers put special emphasis on childhood experience, and they use memories to associate their childhood with their homeland, thus constructing their own “imaginary homeland” to seek for their lost identities and compensate psychologically for their lost childhood. Modern Arabic autobiography mainly applies the novelistic form as its narrative pattern; its narrative structure features the epic style; its narrative space foreground the features of folk culture. Modern Arabic autobiographers unite self-construction and the construction of national culture to present the theme that family and nation share the same destiny. Meanwhile, in different periods, modern Arabic autobiography reflects the ideology and cultural atmosphere of its own time.    

Key Words: childhood autobiography, imaginary homeland, cultural construction, narrative feature  

Zou Lanfang (Ph.D.) is a Professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China. At present she has finished a National Social Sciences Project – “A Study of Arabic Auto/biographies”. She has published several academic papers, such as “Exile, Memories, Representations - A Review and Comments on Palestinian Movies”, “Echoes of an Autobiography: The Discovery of Landscape”, “After the Last Sky…Sunset Oasis”，“On the Drifting Subjectivity embodied in Women’s Autobiography: A Case Study of Nawal El-Saadawi’s My Life，Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's autobiography Narrative Reflected in his two works ‘the Why did you leave the horse alone’，‘Memory for Forgetfulness’ , Arab Spring from Cultural Perspective. Right now she is the deputy secretary general of Chinese Foreign Auto/biographical Association. So far she has participated in several important Chinese and international conferences on auto/biography, Eco-literature and Oriental literature.