Read A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature Online
Authors: David Tresilian
17
. Quotations from Nawal al-Saadawi,
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor
, trans. Catherine Cobham (London: Saqi, 1988).
18
. Quotations from Nawal al-Saadawi,
Memoirs from the Women’s Prison,
trans. Marilyn Booth (London: Women’s Press, 1986).
19
. May Telmissany,
Dunyazad
, trans. Roger Allen (London: Saqi, 2000).
20
. Stories collected in Alifa Rifaat,
Distant View of a Minaret
, trans. Denys Johnson-Davies (London: Heinemann, 1983).
21
. Stories collected in Salwa Bakr,
The Wiles of Men
, trans. Denys Johnson-Davies (London: Quartet, 1992).
22
. See Hourani (
A History of the Arab Peoples
, 2002),
Chapter 2
5.
23
. Quotations from Miriam Cooke’s
War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War
(1996). Cooke calls this group the ‘Beirut Decentrists’.
24
. Hanan al-Shaykh,
The Story of Zahra
, trans. Peter Ford (London: Quartet, 1991).
25
. Hanan al-Shaykh,
Women of Sand and Myrrh
, trans. Catherine Cobham (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
26
. Hanah al-Shaykh,
Only in London
, trans. Catherine Cobham (London: Bloomsbury, 2002).
27
. Ghada Samman,
Beirut Nightmares
, trans. Nancy Roberts (London: Quartet, 1997).
28
. Stephan Guth’s essay ‘The Function of Sexual Passages in some Egyptian Novels of the 1980s’ is a useful
tour d’horizon
, arguing that descriptions of sexuality are intended to ‘widen the scope of reality’ and what can be publicly discussed (in R. Allen, H. Kilpatrick and Ed de Moor (eds.),
Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature
, London: Saqi, 1995, pp. 123–130).
29
. See the legal survey by the International Lesbian and Gay Association at
www.ilga.org
, which also indicates the social stigma involved.
30
. Raouf Moussad writes on these issues in his ‘Objectively Marginalised’,
al-Ahram Weekly
, 6 July 2006 (online at:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/802/cu6.htm
).
31
. Brian Whitaker,
Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East
(London: Saqi, 2006), quotations from
Chapter 7
.
32
. Frédéric Lagrange gives the historical background in his ‘Male Homosexuality in Modern Arabic Literature’, already cited in connection with the novels of Sonallah Ibrahim (see footnote 13 to the previous chapter).
33
. Hoda Barakat,
The Tiller of Waters
, trans. Marilyn Booth (Cairo: AUC Press, 2001).
34
. Hoda Barakat,
The Stone of Laughter
, trans. Sophie Bennett (Reading: Garnet, 1994).
35
. Interview with Hoda Barakat in
Le Monde
(15 June 2007).
36
. Idris Ali,
Dongola
, trans. Peter Theroux (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998) and Haggag Hassan Oddoul,
Nights of Musk
, trans. Anthony Calderbank (Cairo: AUC Press, 2005).
37
. Ibrahim al-Koni,
The Bleeding of the Stone
, trans. May Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley (New York: Interlink, 2001).
1
. Sabry Hafez describes this atmosphere in his ‘The Novel, Politics and Islam’,
New Left Review
5, September–October 2000, pp. 117–141, which focuses on the withdrawal of the novel
A Banquet for Seaweed
by Syrian writer Haydar Haydar. Taha Hussein was forced to withdraw his book on pre-Islamic poetry – poetry written before the advent of Islam – in 1926 ‘because it suggested a critical method which, if applied to the texts of religion, might cast doubt on their authenticity, and … it struck at the roots of the traditional structure of Arabic learning’ (A. Hourani,
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).
2
. See Khaled Dawoud’s ‘Control without bounds?’ at
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/593/eg6.htm
. Naguib Surur (d. 1978) was recognized as a poet and playwright of genius by his peers from the ‘generation of the 1960s’.
3
. Quotations from P. Cachia,
An Overview of Modern Arabic Literature
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990).
4
. Paul Starkey,
Modern Arabic Literature
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).
5
. Elias Khoury,
Gate of the Sun
(London: Vintage, 2006) and Alaa Al Aswany,
The Yacoubian Building
, trans. Humphrey Davies (New York: Harper, 2006). The novels have also been made into films:
The Yacoubian Building
(dir. Marwan Hamed, 2006), and
Gate of the Sun
(dir. Yousry Nasrallah, 2004).
6
. See the wide-ranging interview with Khoury, ‘Politics and Culture in Lebanon’, on the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies Website (
http://www.lcps-lebanon.org/pub/breview/br5/khourybr5.html
).
7
. Alaa Al Aswany,
Chicago
(Cairo: Dar el-Shurouq, 2007).
Most references are given in endnotes to the text. However, it may be useful to have the following standard or reference works listed in one place.
For listings of the works of individual Arab authors in English translation, see Salih J. Altoma,
Modern Arabic Literature in Translation
(London: Saqi, 2005). Other bibliographical or reference works include those edited by Paul Starkey and Julie Scott Meisami,
Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature
(London: Routledge, 1998, 2 vols.), which includes entries on classical Arabic literature as well as on modern, and by John J. Donohue and Leslie Tramontani,
Crosshatching in Global Culture: A Dictionary of Modern Arab Writers
(Beirut and Würzburg: Orient-Institut and Ergon Verlag, 2004, 2 vols.), which gives biographical or autobiographical entries for Arab authors and full bibliographies. A French reference book is Jamel-Eddin Bencheikh (ed.),
Dictionnaire de littératures arabe et maghrébine francophone
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2000).
Useful anthologies of modern Arabic literature are given in endnotes to the text. In addition, there is
Modern Arabic Fiction: An
Anthology
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, and, easier to handle,
The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction
(New York: Anchor, 2006), edited by Denys Johnson-Davies. A convenient general history is Albert Hourani,
A History of the Arab Peoples
(London: Faber & Faber, 2002), which may be supplemented by historical works by country and topic. Hourani’s book includes an extensive bibliography, unfortunately not updated since 1991. A standard work on the earlier period is Hourani,
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962). For Egypt,
The History of Modern Egypt
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1991) by P. J. Vatikiotis is especially useful. An essential reference work on all aspects of traditional and religious culture is
The Encyclopedia of Islam
(Leiden: Brill, 12 vols.). A monument of scholarship edited by authorities in the field, the
Encyclopedia
is now on its third edition, and articles from this and from the second edition can be consulted online.
General critical surveys of modern Arabic literature include those by Paul Starkey,
Modern Arabic Literature
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), Pierre Cachia,
An Overview of Modern Arabic Literature
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990) and Roger Allen,
The Arabic Novel
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995). There is also M. M. Badawi’s
Short History of Modern Arabic Literature
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) and the same author’s edited volume in the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature series,
Modern Arabic Literature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). All these books contain bibliographies.
French publishers tend to be more active than English in the field of modern Arabic literature: it is worth keeping an eye on new French titles for those able to read the language.
On contemporary trends, the British literary magazine
Banipal
may be consulted, which features translated extracts.
Al-Ahram
Weekly
, published in Cairo by Al-Ahram, features material on contemporary Arabic literature and can be read online. Certain publishers, Saqi in Britain, the American University in Cairo Press in Egypt and New York, and various American university presses (for example Syracuse and Arkansas), publish translations of modern Arabic literature. Announcements can be consulted on the Internet. Web searches also turn up collections of Arabic literature in translation, especially poetry, hosted by various, usually academic, institutions.
Page numbers in
italic
indicate an illustration.
Abd al-Jawad, Ahmad
64
Abd al-Jawad, Amina
29–30
,
66
,
68
,
141
The Tragedy of al-Hallaj
(verse play)
130
Abdel-Meguid, Ibrahim
133
Abdel-Quddus, Ihsan
142
I am Free
142
Abdel-Wahhab, Mohamed
15
al-Abnoudi, Abd al-Rahman
91
,
126
,
127
Abu Madi, Ilya
62
Abyad, Georges
62
al-Adab
(literature review)
86
Adrift on the Nile
, Naguib Mahfouz
70
,
71–2
Ahmed, Leila
140
al-Aidy, Ahmad,
Being Abbas el Abd
135
,
136
,
138
Akhbar al-Adab
(weekly literary review)
119
‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’
32
Ali, Idris,
Dongola
153
Ali Jinah of Tabriz
(play), Alfred Farag
129
All That’s Left to You
, Ghassan Kanafani
96
Altoma, Salih
25
Amin, Qassem
139–40
al-Amira zaat al-Himah
(Arabic epic)
116
Amrikanli
, Sonallah Ibrahim
119
An Egyptian Childhood
, Taha Hussein
49
Anxiety Bank
(play), Tawfiq al-Hakim
130
Arabian Nights and Days
, Naguib Mahfouz
74
Arabian Nights, The
, Sir Richard Burton
3
,
29
,
32
,
130
,
131
,
145
Arab–European contrasts
54–5
,
59
,
79–80
,
150–1
Ashur, Nu’man
129
Aslan, Ibrahim
133
Al Aswany, Alaa
149
,
150
,
151
,
162–2
At the Bus Stop
, Naguib Mahfouz
111
el-Atrache, Farid
15
Autumn Quail
, Naguib Mahfouz
70
,
71
Baalbaki, Leila
142
Baalbek Festival, Lebanon
131
Badawi, M M,
Modern Arabic Drama in Egypt
129
,
130
Bakr, Salwa
146
Barakat ibn Musa, Zayni
120
Barghouti, Mourid,
I Saw Ramallah
105
,
106–7
,
108
al-Baroudi, Mahmoud Sami
61
al-Bayati, Abdul Wahab
87
Beer in the Snooker Club
, Waguih Ghali
12
Beggar, The
, Naguib Mahfouz
70
,
71
Beginning and the End, The
, Naguib Mahfouz
66
,
141–2
Being Abbas el Abd
, Ahmad al-Aidy
135
,
136
,
138
Beirut, Beirut
, Sonallah Ibrahim
118
Beirut Nightmare
, Ghada Samman
147–9
Berrada, Mohamed
14
el-Bisatie, Mohamed
133
Bleeding of the Stone, The
, Ibrahim al-Koni
154
Blue Aubergine
, Miral al-Tahawy
136–8
Bowles, Paul
37
Burton, Sir Richard,
The Arabian Nights
29
,
30
,
32
,
130
,
131
,
145
Cachia, Pierre
159–60
Cairo Trilogy
, Naguib Mahfouz
29
,
30
,
34
,
63
,
66–8
,
77
,
141
Cambridge History of Arabic Literature
14
Casanova, Pascale
41
La République mondiale des lettres
42–3
Cheapest Nights, The
, Yusuf Idris
75
Chicago
, Alaa Al Aswany
162