Once at the Forefront, Arabic Literature Lags Behind
By CARL GIBEILYPublished: April 06, 2009
BOOKLOVERS -- The International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2009, now in its second year, was won by Egyptian author Youssef Ziedan for his novel “Beelzebub.” The prize aims to encourage Arabic creative writing and promote its awareness internationally. MANAMA -- Arabs like to say that they practically invented storytelling. But the reality is that the Arabic novel has remained on the margins of world literature probably since the end of the Abbasid golden age.
While nonfiction devoted to politics and religion in the Arab region is always in demand, interest in Arab literature from a Western viewpoint hasn't moved too far past sweetened versions of "One Thousand and One Nights," "Aladdin" and "Sinbad."
Even celebrated writers like the Egyptian novelist, Naguib Mahfouz, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, fail to attract more than a clutch of diehard literati in the region.
Publishers of fiction and literature in the Gulf must confront not only the problems of their counterparts elsewhere, namely the erosion of the number of readers under the onslaught of satellite television the Internet and play stations, among other forms of entertainment. But they must also deal with a host of regional factors, including conflicts, censorship and illiteracy, which all combine to threaten the very future of fiction.
According to an old adage about Arab books, Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads. That changed with the collapse of the cultured and urbane Iraqi middle class under the economic sanctions imposed during the 1990s and with the ongoing mayhem following the U.S.-led invasion.
But some problems predate the region's conflicts, including, most prominently, the language itself. Specifically, the kind of Arabic used in a piece of work can deter swathes of potential readers. The most sophisticated, classical Arabic is understood throughout the Arab world, but comes across on the page as somewhat akin to Shakespeare or even Chaucer to modern Anglo-Saxon ears. On the other hand, national dialects travel badly, with Algerian Arabic, for example, emerging as the densest and least intelligible brogue to Gulf readers.
One of the compromises made famous by such writers as Mahfouz is to write in classical Arabic for the broadest possible Arab audience. But that requires readers to suspend disbelief when the hookers and petty underworld mobsters of old Cairo strut around waxing lyrical as bards.
And even if the language itself is not a hurdle, governments across the Arab world are constantly banning books. State-owned publishing houses have been producing less and less fiction in recent years, having grown skittish over content in the midst of a barrage of criticism from conservative groups. Even such timeless works as "One Thousand and One Nights" and the equally salacious Abbasid-era poetry of Abu Nawas are officially prohibited owing to their content - although copies can generally still be found in libraries.
However, perhaps the greatest hurdle to Arab literature is a ubiquitous aversion to reading, which has its roots in the education systems across the region and, more specifically, to the learning by rote imposed on Arab children in their formative years.
Elementary schoolchildren are required to memorize great chunks of poorly-written, badly-illustrated and usually colorless textbooks. The upshot is that books in general become perceived as tools for punishment by the young to the extent that, upon leaving schools and colleges, many Arabs become committed non-readers for life.
This general lack of reading that restricts Arab intellectual life was raised five years ago by the United Nations in the Arab Human Development Report. Using the dearth of translated foreign works as an indicator of the intellectual decline, the report noted that Spain translates in one year the same number of books that have been translated into Arabic over the past 1,000 years, some 10,000 books in all.
Some homegrown initiatives have set themselves the Herculean task of redressing the situation, most notably Kalima - Arabic for "word" - a nonprofit organization operating under the aegis of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, whose noble if drop-in-the-ocean endeavor is to translate and publish 500 contemporary titles a year by 2010.
The stated goal is to expose Arabic readers to influential works of world literature and academia, and ultimately to bridge cultures by bringing to the fore great novels and poems that reflect the common humanity of people.
Optimists are quick to make comparisons with the past, recalling that, until the end of the first millennium, Arab scholars and libraries led the world in producing and preserving knowledge in science, medicine, philosophy and the arts. More to the point, it was precisely a respect for the written word by the ruling elite and a drive to translate influential Latin and ancient Greek texts into Arabic that made it all happen.
Of course the counter argument is that - as with the geopolitical stimulus that gave rise to the Abbasid paragon - a true Arab renaissance will require nothing less than a complete collapse of the current world order and a new and prolonged dark age in the West.
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Carl Gibeily is a Lebanese novelist and journalist, whose novels include, "Blueprint for a Prophet," (Doubleday: UK) and "March Dust," (to be published in 2010).
