Arab Authors’ Favorites 2018: The List

Each December, ArabLit manages — by the skin of its collective teeth — to put together an “authors’ favorites of the year.” With appreciation to all of this year’s participating authors.

Yasser Abdellatif

Yasser Abdellatif is an award-winning Egyptian poet, short-story writer, screenwriter, and novelist. You can read his Law of Inheritance in Robin Moger’s translation.

Mohamed Kheir’s second novel Letting the Fingers Go إفلات الأصابع (Kotob Khan, 2018) was the best Arabic fiction I read in 2018. Kheir is a prominent poet, songwriter, and columnist, but to me he’s at his best when writing fiction, both long and short. In this novel, he weaves a unique construction from bits and pieces of stories in a poetic dreamlike atmosphere. And with it, he attains a new phase in his career.

I’m not a big fan of Gilles Deleuze, and my philosophical test is a bit classical or pre-post-modernist, but I really enjoyed reading Ahmed Hassãn’s Arabic translation of L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze (Al-Mahroussa Press, Cairo), or Deleuze from A to Z in English, which in origin was a long televised interview held by his disciple and friend Claire Parnet. This interview covers a wide spectrum of the philosopher’s original concepts sorted from A to Z, in a playful journalistic way, but is still deep and gratifying. Ahmed Hassãn the translator, or El –Gentle, as we, his friends and disciples used to call him, always provides the Arabic library with precious texts from western thoughts and philosophy that he deals with in three European languages. No wonder it is he who introduced to us names like Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and many others…apart from his translation of some literary classics from Latin America and Spain.

Hisham Bustani

Hisham Bustani is a Jordanian short-story writer. You can read his The Perception of Meaning in Thoraya El Rayyes’s award-winning translation and 20 more stories online.

Mohamed Makhzangi, Fatima’s Piano; and In Search of a New National Animal for Our Country (بيانو فاطمة، والبحث عن حيوان رمزي جديد للبلاد), Dar al-Shorouk, 2018

In this new work, Mohamed Makhzangi continues to explore the boundaries of short-story writing. Known for his preference for shorter, more condensed texts, this book is a departure in that it moves toward the long short story and is comprised of two separate pieces. “Fatima’s Piano” is a novella — at least according to the cover — that traces the history of a piano in a secluded Egyptian village, thought by the locals to be inhabited by spirits, which enable it to warn them of earthquakes. The story from the narrator’s Kiev memories, when he decided to buy the piano and take it home to Egypt, to when it ended up as a curiosity for the local kids as its massive size prevented it from climbing the narrow stairs of the building, to when he later sold it on to an obscure destiny. “In Search of a New National Animal for Our Country” is designated as a takreesa (a collection of texts) but is actually a long serious of essays on literary non-fiction that crosses at times into the short-story format, producing a unique exploration of the political, social, and economic peculiarities as seen through the lens of animal ethology, mythology, and metaphors. Another excellent book from this excellent writer.

 Various authors, Portfolio 67: Fifty Years after the 1967 War (2018)
ملف 67: خمسون عامًا على حرب حزيران 1967 ; 2018

This stylish, well-designed book is a collective Arab effort by eight independent media websites form Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon to bring out a collaborative portfolio, first published online, to mark the 50th anniversary of the 6-day war, into book format. In the process, contrary to the trend of the times, it transforms the virtual into a material object. Israel’s massive defeat of the Arab armies in June 1967 (formally dubbed: “al-Naksa,” or the setback), left an indelible scar and the rocked the Arab world for generations and generations to come, influencing all aspects of life, from politics to economics to arts and literature. The book also contains non-written elements: podcasts that the readers is urged to listen to through inserting printed links into their browsers. Aspects explored include: the experiences of families of soldiers who went missing in action, the fragmentation of love stories on both sides of the border after the Israeli occupation, the rise of military resistance in Palestine after the defeat, the participation of Gulf nationals in the war effort, and the effect of the ’67 defeat on Arab media, music, cinema, arts, and literature. It is the successful collaboration between 7iber, Mada Masr, Ma3azef, Sowt, Aljumhuriya, Ittijah, Doon Taraddod, and Manshoor, something I hope will continue in the future, transforming quality online-only material into material books.

Mansoura Ezz Eldin

Mansoura Ezz Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and journalist. You can read her Maryam’s Maze in Paul Starkey’s translation.

Mohamed Kheir’s second novel, Letting the Fingers Go, إفلات الأصابع(Kotob Khan, 2018). Mohamed Kheir succeeds in presenting a world full of realistic detail — or at least it can be of realities with full details of realism, or at least it is a response to reality. Sometimes we feel that the writer is keen to place a calculated distance between himself and the instinctual and fantasy, as the writing here is not merely a reflection of reality. In the end, we find ourselves in a dream space in which one part of what we have experienced is present, but after the hand of art has turned it into a new creation that involves the essence of its real origins along with large amounts of imagination and metaphor that always open to us a world beyond the limits of reality.

The House Was My Seventh Brother, by Muhairi Huwaidi (2018). A very unique book of poetry by Syrian poet who I read for the first time. The poems are mostly out of the crucible of the Syrian tragedy, and its vocabulary is of bullets, missing bodies, and abandoned houses. Yet the poet aspires, in a way, to destroy. In a poem “War Is Not Like War,” he writes: “”أريد أن تصبح الخوذة أصيص وردٍ/ وزناد البندقية مزلاجاً لباب جديد/ وصوت الرصاص ضحكاً متواصلاً مع الأصدقاء/ أو شجاراً لذيذاً في عشاء العائلة! (…..) أريد أن أكتب العشب،/ العشب الذي سينبت على حديد المدافع!”

Muhammad Abdelnabi

Muhammad Abdelnabi is an Egyptian novelist. You can read his In the Spider’s Room in Jonathan Wright’s translation. 

The Critical Condition for K, by Aziz Mohammed (2017)

In his first novel, the author managed to create a unique balance between his observations of the community and himself; between sweetness and pain; sadness and irony; the depth of experience and the flow of the narrative. This is a novel that touches the soul.

The Turquoise Carpet, by Ahmed Al Zanati (2017)

In a vortex of narratives that move through time and space, this first work shapes a question about the spirituality of humanity, somewhat burdened by religious and Sufi references.

God 99, by Hassan Blasim (2018)

I didn’t feel this was a novel so much as it is a group of stories connected by one storyteller, who gathers his characters and his stories from here and there. It has the same boldness the writer has employed in his other books, and the same view at the Arab situation, as though he were writing in fire and blood.

Mohamed Kheir’s second novel Letting the Fingers Go إفلات الأصابع (Kotob Khan, 2018)

Khair, in this novel, employs his particular style of crafting human paintings that cross over and intertwine as he paints in his usual pale pastels. What’s new this time is that he approaches the fantasy world without exaggeration, in a very controlled manner and with a precise tone.

Children of the Alley: Biography of a Forbidden Novel, by Mohamed Shoair (2018)

Through beautiful flowing language, the writer paints a wide, lively panorama around the circumstances that accompanied the publication of the novel and all the unpleasant events that followed, including the failed attempt on Mahfouz’s life. This work is created after studying the subject and presenting it in the right tone and right way.

Glamorous Wars: Stories, by Hassan Abdul Moojoud (2018)

A new step in Abdul Moujood’s story writing, a stronger approach in which he crafts his own writing style, which has both the human touch and some sarcasm.

Recipe No. 7, by Ahmed Magdi Hammam (2017)

In this novel, we can see a shift in Hammam’s writing style; here, he builds a parallel world with its history, landscapes, people, and their struggles. An illusionary, easy, and interesting novel that presents as a popular young adult fantasy novel yet in its own special way.

Ahmed al-Mahdi

Ahmed al-Mahdi is an Egyptian YA and genre writer. You can read an excerpt from his Reem at ArabKidLitNow!

The Commandments, Adel Esmat (Jan 2018). Esmat has said that The Commandments is the work he’s dreamed of writing for 30 years, and that it’s his most important and the greatest work. The novel belongs to the literature of generations, of the eternal Arabic masterpieces such as those of Naguib Mahfouz and Munif’s Cities of Salt quintet and world masterpieces such as Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude. The story of The Commandments is also the story of the October War, as if the “commandments” were not only reflective of the small part of the countryside in which the events revolve, but reflect the entire volatile modern history of Egypt.

Seller of Words, Rima Ra’i (2018). In Seller of Words, Rima Ra’i launches a noble call to accept the other, regardless of name, shape, or identity, and an invitation to spread tolerance rather than hate. Ra’i’s language is beautiful and smooth, and her words subtly draw us through the pages of the novel, as for instance she describes walking in the village streets at the sunset with “نزهة في قارب وردي اللون في نهر عذب غير مرئي إلا لمن ينظر بقلبه أو يتقن الزقزقة.” The story turns into a very fast-paced narrative, which the reader can only leave after they reach its conclusion.

Thunderbird, Sonia Nimr (2016). The novel Thunderbird by Palestinian writer Sonia Nimr is a new and important addition to Arab fantasy literature for young people, as well as an important addition to Palestinian literature. The novel was published in 2016 by the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Palestine and was shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Arabic Children’s Literature in the YA category.

Hammour Ziada

Hammour Ziada is a Sudanese author and journalist. You can read his Naguib Mahfouz Medal-winning The Longing of the Dervish in Jonathan Wright’s translation.

Children of the Alley: Biography of a Forbidden Novel, by Mohamed Shoair

The best book I read this year was Biography of a Forbidden Novel. The book is historical and cultural research on the circumstance at the time when Naguib Mahfouz’s Children of the Alley was published. It about the situation in Egypt, the literary community and the reactions the novel created at that time. I think it is the best critical study that I have read.

Golan Haji

Golan Haji is a Syrian poet and translator with a postgraduate degree in pathology. You can read his A Tree Whose Name I Don’t Know in translation by Haji and Stephen Watts.

Hoda Barakat, The Night Post 

Inaam Kachachi, Al-Nabiza (The Excluded) 

Al-Ma’arri, Chapters and Endings

Emmanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell (translated into Arabic by Habib Salmoni, Cairo 1896)

Nikolai Berdyaev, Solitude and Society (translated into Arabic by Fouad Kamel)

Azmi Islam, Ludwig Wittgenstein

Samir Naqqash, Tantal

Amal Nawwar, Jungle Woman 

Mohammad Khdhayyer, The Graspable and The Ungraspable

I must confess, I am not a reader of novels. I seldom finish reading a novel. Perhaps because I don’t like following the plots. However, I constantly read Al-Ma’arri and Al-Niffari. They are essential readings for me. I am also fond of certain Russian writers and thinkers who lived in Europe and western Russia throughout the first half of the twentieth century. I cherish their company which I badly need every now and then. Writers like Andrey Bely and Nikolai Berdyaev warm my soul with their sharp but tender minds. Fortunately, we have some of Berdyaev’s books available in Fouad Kamel’s excellent translations.

I enjoyed James Wright’s biography. He’s one of the closest poets to my heart. I somehow feel that his Martins Ferry is my own hometown too, unlike The Town in Cavafy’s famous poem. I love what James Wright had written about little towns in Italy and France. Technical skills are nothing if devoid of compassion, and Wright’s obsessions are full of compassion. He had transformed his tormented memories and incessant keen observations into lucid and enduring landscapes. The book also contains excerpts from his journals and letters.

I feel some affinity with writers like Mercè Rodoreda or Marcela Delpastre who wrote in Catalan and Occitan respectively. I admire those who have insisted on writing in their own “minor” languages, a gift of which I was deprived, since I couldn’t practically write anything in Kurdish.

I was glad to come across the Lebanese poet Amal Nawwar’s new collection of poems in Beirut last month. I’m reading it slowly.

Hölderlin’s poem and his letters to his mother are moving. I wanted to visit Bordeaux in a different epoch, and see again the muddy estuary of the Garrone in the Atlantic, the orange lamplights over the Pont de Pierre in cold evenings. I missed those long autumn walks I once had there.

Inaam Kachachi

Inaam Kachachi is an Iraqi novelist. You can read her International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted novel The American Granddaughter in Nariman Youssef’s translation.

The Mexican Wife, by Egyptian novelist Iman Yahya

A novel that combines love and the political movements in 1950s Cairo, unveiling the unknown marriage between the well-known author Yusuf Idris and the Mexican architect Ruth Rivera, daughter of the internationally renowned artist Diego Rivera.

The language and style are easy and clear and the novel moves us from one surprise to another.

Lemya Shammat

Lemya Shammat is a Sudanese author and translator.

Abdel Moneim Ajab’s Overview of Modern Sudanese Literature was published in 2011 by Nineveh Press, Damascus. The book presents a close review of modern Sudanese literature, its major figures and currents and trends. It also provides an accurate monitoring of the early contributions of Muawya Mohamed Nour, as one of the most prominent figures of Sudanese culture and literary modernity and enlightenment, despite his relatively young age and short life. Important citations are provided which represent the central ideas in the process of Muawia’s short and eventful journey. The first chapter, “Muawya Mohamed Nour the Pioneer of Arab Critical Modernity,” retraces the biography of Nour and discusses his leading contributions in the history of modern Arabic literature since 1928, when he began to seriously participate in the literary circles and to publish successive valued critical articles, even before his graduation at the American University of Beirut.

Collector of Butterflies, by Bushra Khlfan, published by Al-Intishar Al-Arabi “Arab Diffusion”, via The Omani Society of Writers and Literati, is a magnificent collection of short stories, gracefully written in rich multi-layered narrative, with intimate portraiture, spirited tiny details and memorable characters. The dozen short stories present a piece of elegant prose. In stories such as “House on Top of the Dune,” “Small Passing Things,” and “Frame” the writer manifests his deeply and thoughtful unbounded imagination and technical brilliance. My particular favorite in this collection is “Falsehood” which roams in the realm of childhood with a profoundly moving language.

Book of Dreams, by Rahme Al-Mafayzawi, published by Omani Society of Writers and Literati, Al-Intishar Al-Arabi “Arab Diffusion”Publishing house is a captivating collection of short stories. In its 126 pages the stories delve into female-centric issues and societal stereotypes through a daring, thought-provoking language and boundary-pushing narrative.

Fadi Zaghmout

Fadi Zaghmout is a Jordanian gender activist, author, and blogger. You can read his Bride of Amman in Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp’s translation, and his Heaven on Earth in Sawad Hussain’s translation.