The Arabic Novel: The Voice of an Oppressed People

Appearing in the Current Al Jadid

In his “The Arabic Novel: The Voice of an Oppressed People,” Shaker al-Anbari examines the rise of the Arabic novel as a medium for exploring interactions within Arab communities. Where the short story and poetry failed to capture the large-scale impact of war and strife, the Arabic novel allows writers to artistically respond to the upheaval and change which has shaken entire societies. This has sparked a recent spike in Arabic novels – in numbers and in the desire to translate these works – as publishing houses see a profitable prospect.

Essays and Features

Documentary Examines Different Narratives of Lebanese War from the Perspective of Major Participants

Forthcoming in Al Jadid

In a recent film, co-directors Daniele Rugo and Abi Weaver consider the tragic extent of the Lebanese Civil War. Following the experiences of three ex-fighters from different sides of the conflict, the documentary “About a War” reopens old wounds while paving a path towards healing. In the words of Sarah Khalil, who interviewed Weaver for an Al Araby article, “Communities are still yet to hear the experiences of others who now they call neighbors. In the film, the confessions of the ex-fighters are woven together to present narratives likely unheard by the other side.”

Films

Who are ‘Bad Girls’...And Who Says So? New Book Examines Women Who Transgress Social Norms in Today’s Middle East

Forthcoming in Al Jadid

Nadia Yaqub and Rula Quawas’ “Bad Girls of the Arab World” (University of Texas Press, 2017) records and analyzes the experiences of Arab women who transgress social norms, telling the stories of Arab women from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Palestine, Egypt, the Maghreb, and the United States. In her review of the book for Al Jadid, Pamela Nice notes that the strongest chapters in this work “break free from the bonds of academic jargon and present women in their full flesh-and-blood selves.”

Books

New Book on Adonis: A ‘Rehabilitation’ Biography?

Forthcoming in Al Jadid

The 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution did not go unnoticed by some Arab intellectuals. The anniversary evoked few positive thoughts, even leading some to regret how enthusiastically they had welcomed the revolution back in 1979. Mouhamad Houjeiri, a Lebanese intellectual and journalist, recalled the occasion through a column, "The Cultural Fascination with the Khomeinist Revolution," published in the Beirut-based Al Modon. He offers a brief recollection of some Lebanese and Arab intellectuals who were fascinated by Khomeini. Importantly among them stands Adonis, whose grand “Salute to Iran’s Revolution” lingers in many intellectual memories. Houjeiri's recollection extended to Western intellectuals who were equally fascinated by Khomeini, and particularly the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Essays and Features

Siham Nasser: Lebanese Playwright, Fiery Promoter of an Independent Theater, Dies at 69

Forthcoming in Al Jadid

The Lebanese creative community has been losing many of its pillars. The latest sorrowful loss was of Siham Nasser (1950-2019), a Lebanese playwright and academic who passed away late January. This loss coincides, unfortunately, with a consistent decline in financial support and audience attendance of stage theater. In an interview, Nasser expressed her frustration with the state of Lebanese theater: “All of us Arabs, in general, would rather go to the restaurant than the theater. I want to make theater one of our daily and social habits.”

Essays and Features

‘The Morning They Came for Us’: Untold Stories of Syria's Most Vulnerable Victims

By 
Elie Chalala

Ms. Janine di Giovanni, one of Europe’s most respected reporters, chronicles the hardships inflicted upon adults and children alike, telling tales both gruesome and emotional in her new book, “The Morning They Came for Us” (Liveright, 2016). 

 

Ms. Janine di Giovanni, one of Europe’s most respected reporters, chronicles the hardships inflicted upon adults and children alike, telling tales both gruesome and emotional in her new book, “The Morning They Came for Us” (Liveright, 2016). From her visits to Syria in 2012, di Giovanni gathered stories, speaking with a diverse group of people including pro-Assad nuns, regime doctors, and civilian activists...“The Morning They Came for Us” provides rich content that can be difficult to find in daily news coverage alone.

Dreaming at the Crossroads of Cultures: Mirages

By 
Angele Ellis

Issa Makhlouf’s “Mirages” (The Post-Apollo Press, 2015), formerly translated from the Arabic into French in 2004, returns in an English edition translated by Alicia F. Lam.

 
Mirages
By Issa Makhlouf, translated into English by Alicia F. Lam
The Post-Apollo Press, 2015
 
Issa Makhlouf, an expatriate poet, possesses an anthropologist’s eye, a philosopher’s soul, a journalist’s sense of detail – and a heart rooted in the mountains and valleys of Lebanon.

Love and Loss: An Iran-Iraq Story

By 
Bobby Gulshan

For those unaccustomed to witnessing the daily, random bombardments of cities during a bloody conflict like the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, it would be hard to imagine the lives of those who actually endured those experiences.

 
For those unaccustomed to witnessing the daily, random bombardments of cities during a bloody conflict like the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, it would be hard to imagine the lives of those who actually endured those experiences. The novel “A Portal in Space” (Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 2015), by Mahmoud Saeed, allows readers to feel, share, and interact with the ordinary people living in war-plagued Basra, Iraq. You cannot help but feel connected to the characters as they struggle to cope with their worries, fears, and despair.

Diaspora Arab Women Writers: The Legacy of Shahrazad and Female Infanticide

By 
Nada Ramadan Elnahla

Rather than focus on Arab women’s repression from an observer’s viewpoint, Hanadi al-Samman’s “Anxiety of Erasure: Trauma, Authorship, and the Diaspora in Arab Women's Writings” (Syracuse University Press) instead highlights the accounts of female writers living in diaspora who have contributed productively and creatively through their writings.

Rima Assaf: How One Broadcaster Liberated Her Emotions with the Written Word

By 
Rima Assaf

While preparing my report on the Holocaust of Aleppo, I felt the customary format of broadcast news did not allow me to express my feelings. Thus, I have resorted to these written words in order to release my unbearable pain after watching a father breaking and clawing at stones with his bare hands in search of his children, entombed under mountains of rubbles.

While preparing my report on the Holocaust of Aleppo, I felt the customary format of broadcast news did not allow me to express my feelings. Thus, I have resorted to these written words in order to release my unbearable pain after watching a father breaking and clawing at stones with his bare hands in search of his children, entombed under mountains of rubbles.

Through these words I repeat those of a wounded child in Al Sukari suburb hospital as she cried out: “Mother, help me! May God support and comfort you. My heart hurts me.”

Aleppo: A Catastrophe Defying Poets’ Powers of Description

By 
Amjad Nasser

When talking about what is happening in Syria, I face the inability of language to express reality. My vocabulary remains limited. My ability to describe reality, the basic forms of literature and writing, remains limited.  Nothing I have written or read could be elevated to the level of one moment of the reality experienced by Syrians in their disastrous country, or in their great Diaspora into which they were unmercifully pushed.

 

When talking about what is happening in Syria, I face the inability of language to express reality. My vocabulary remains limited. My ability to describe reality, the basic forms of literature and writing, remains limited.  Nothing I have written or read could be elevated to the level of one moment of the reality experienced by Syrians in their disastrous country, or in their great Diaspora into which they were unmercifully pushed.

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