Artistic and aesthetic phenomena in the (Al-Bairaq) collection of Bassam Al-Muslim

The current study provides a critical reading of "Al-Bairaq" stories collection of the Kuwaiti storyteller Bassam Al-Musallam. This is done through the examination of the artistic and aesthetic phenomena included in the stories of the afore-mentioned collection; Al-Bairaq is a collection through which the storyteller's intellectual maturity has evolved, and so did his artistic tools. The author has made a name for himself in the field of the Kuwaiti short story. This study aims at displaying the social and historical issues that occurred in Kuwait by describing the stage where most of the events of the stories occurred, and to highlight the image of men and marginalization of women as it turns out that they both suffered from marginalization. The study shall also highlight the narrator's use of the fantastic narration to depict the psychological state of his protagonists in addition to the use of the 1st person narrative as the narrative tool used for this collection.