The 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction judges have had their say; now some of our favorite authors will have theirs. Over the next few days, as the year ends, ArabLit and Egypt Independent will be running through acclaimed Arab poets, novelists, and short-story writers’ favorite reads of 2012. I’m not sure of the sequencing over at EI, but over here, we’ll start with nonfiction (today), and then move to favorites in poetry and fiction.
These lists will be in alphabetical order (by Anglicized transliteration). All authors were able to choose nonfiction, poetry, novels or all of the above.
Omar Berrada, Moroccan poet
A figure little known outside of the Arabic language, Moroccan philosopher Abdessalam Ben Abdelali has been very prolifically writing philosophy that manages to be at once radical and readable. Slim volumes of collected short pieces that have abandoned the lure of high rhetoric and totalizing systems and rely, rather, on anecdote, social observation, theoretical references of course (though hardly a footnote) and, above all, style. This is philosophy as a literary genre, as a rhythm of thought that you can inhabit. His latest volume, Harakat al-kitaba (Toubkal) is a case in point. The very movement of writing is its real subject, despite its many ostensible topics (untranslatability, wikileaks, cultural tourism, symbols and spectacle, homages to deceased friends and teachers – Mohamed Abed al-Jabri, Abdelkebir Khatibi–, etc.)
Ibrahim Farghali, Egyptian novelist
The second book I really enjoyed is Mustafa Zikri’s Diaries, which is a quite interesting book for how a writer insists to write about a negative literature. He is writing as an exercise, but those exercises became many good pieces about cinema, literature, great writers, great movie makers and actors, rewritings of some of Kafka’s stories, and more. The result is another very original text from Zikri.
Hamdy El Gazzar, Egyptian novelist
May Telmissani, Egyptian novelist
Some submissions were translated from the Arabic; all errors are (probably) mine.