Literary Saloon on the Farouk Hosni debate

The Literary Saloon does a great job taking to task Mahfouz translator Robert Stock over his piece on Egyptian Culture Minister and would-be head of UNESCO Farouk Hosni.

Instead of introducing examples of this [anti-Zionist] intelligentsia, Stock is happy to instead toss out generalizations such as:

This whole imbroglio only serves to highlight the Egyptian literati's generally hateful and hidebound views of Israel, which are often more virulent than those of the Egyptian public at large.

Examples ?
One example, please ?
I don't doubt that examples galore could be dug up (after all, examples of every opinion under the sun are readily found) -- but, hey, how about digging up at least one to appease me? (And surely it's telling that he doesn't: is there any name he could come up with that any of us would recognize -- Gamal al-Ghitani? Sonallah Ibrahim? [the writers I'd consider among the cream of Egyptian literati and intelligentsia] even Alaa al-Aswany ? Somehow I suspect these guys haven't been spouting "hateful and hidebound views" -- so who has? By which I mean: who has who can in any way be taken seriously, as al-Ghitani and Ibrahim and even al-Aswany can.)

World Literature In Between

Not being in Istanbul, I missed my chance to attend this excellent symposium, organized jointly by the English and Comparative Literature Department at Columbia University and the city of Istanbul. I'd particularly like to have heard yesterday's panel: Literature after Orientalism, with speakers Aamir Mufti, Sabry Hafez and Sait Aykut. The Literary Saloon links to Turkish coverage of Orhan Pamuk's involvement. No other reports are forthcoming -- anyone out there in the blogosphere hear what was said?

Two from the Saloon on Contemporary Arabic Literature

The Literary Saloon has two -- perhaps contradictory -- offerings: an op-ed from UAE's The National bemoaning the lack of a coherent "culture of reading" in the Middle East, pointing out that top-down efforts are not connecting to actual readers:

The Emirates Foundation has launched the International Prize for Arabic Fiction as a way for Arab writers and Arab literature to gain exposure. But as The National on Saturday reported, most of the 16 titles nominated for the award cannot be found in Abu Dhabi bookshops.

But they've also put up a review of David Tresilian's very handy A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature, which focuses on fiction where

the contemporary scene now offers almost too much to choose from [...] Tresilian's discussion of works such as Miral al-Tahawy's Blue Aubergine and Ahmed Alaidy's Being Abbas el Abd, as well as Alaa Al Aswany (The Yacoubian Building, Chicago) brings things up to date fairly well.

It's true, as the Tresilian review points out, that

prose narratives, more or less modeled on the Western novel, … tend to get translated and attract the most attention among English-speaking readers

but the international outpouring of love and grief after the death of Mahmoud Darwish suggests some recognition of the traditional depth and ongoing significance and brilliance of poetry as a communitarian, national, personal, and political arena across the Arabic-speaking world.

Denys Johnson-Davies on Arabic literature in translation

Literary Saloon links to a review of Modern Arabic Literature (Tresilian) in Al-Ahram by distinguished translator Johnson-Davies, which features some

mind-boggling numbers

:

Recently modern Arabic literature seems to have made several long strides all at once. It is interesting to note that in the 20 years from 1947 to 1967 a mere 20 titles from modern Arabic literature appeared in English translation. In the next 20 years the situation improved slightly with 84 titles being published in translation between 1967 and 1988. I do not have figures for the yearly number being published these days, but the position has greatly improved.

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing Launched

As Orhan Pamuk uses the Frankfurt Book Fair to denounce the Turkish government, Bloomsbury use it to announce a new publishing venture, working with the Qatar Foundation to help generate and support Qatari literature. Literary Saloon has the full report, with links to the Guardian and Gulf Times coverage.

Poets and Apostates

Complete Review posts at the Literary Saloon about a Jordanian poet accused of being an enemy of Islam, quoting an article in UAE's The National:

Last week, Jordan’s grand mufti, Noah Alqdah Samas, the kingdom’s highest religious authority, called [Islam] Samhan an enemy of religion for his poetry, some of which included lines comparing his loneliness to that of the prophet Yusuf in the Quran...

All this comes as something of a surprise to Samhan, whose book, In a Slim Shadow, published eight months ago, is a collection of his best work over the past decade. The ministry of culture even bought 50 copies.

As The National points out, Jordan is currently working through and working out its own cultural politics of freedom of expression, including King Abdullah II engaging in conversation with bloggers on the website of newspaper Al-Dustour. The charges have prompted discussion in Jordan's online community.

Also a supportive comment for Samhan from the ever-vigilant DhimmiWatch, an organisation dedicated to the curious project of promoting free speech, democracy and feminism (all buzzwords beloved of George W. Bush's administration as casui belli) by promoting the idea of a monolithic, extremist Islam as a, and the only, global threat to free-thinking writers. I look forward to their equally rousing defence of Naomi Wolf, who wrote recently in the Huffington Post about suffering similar threats and shadowy persecution (allegedly government-sponsored) in the US.

The National ends its article with pithy comments voicing the support for freedom of expression within Jordan, from newspaper editor Muwafak Malqawi and from Saud Qubeilat, head of the Jordanian Writers Association, who

warned: “One shouldn’t judge poetry based on literal terms, otherwise many of the poets would be declared apostates."

Presenting the Translation Awards

It was announced over a month ago, but on Tuesday night Fady Joudah received the Saif Ghobash - Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, for The Butterfly's Burden, a collection of three volumes of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish. Complete Review blogging at The Literary Saloon seemed shocked, or at the very least surprised, that it's available in a bilingual edition from Bloodaxe (UK) and Copper Canyon (US) -- editions praised by poet Alfred Corn in his behind-the-scenes account of the pre-award ceremony party in London, attended by Joudah, his parents (flown in from Tennessee) and a number of Arab writers.

The event brings another award, in the form of raising the profile of world literature in translation -- not least poetry, which accounted for five of the seven winners - and the work of translators in creating the "big dialogue." While the blogosphere got there first (The Literary Saloon again, who predicted a blog post by TLS editor Peter Stothard, who presented the awards), there were considered articles in Tuesday's Guardian and André Tahourdin's survey in the TLS.

Welcome to the Blogging Revolution

Following the publication of a number of influential blooks from the Middle East, including those by Salam Pax and Riverbend, Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein has collected together interviews with bloggers based in repressive regimes in his book The Blogging Revolution, which he's been talking about on SBS Radio Arabic and in today's Guardian. He asserts that citizen journalism and new media publishing can literally change the world, by providing freedom of information from within countries where media is closely state-controlled, and can allow internet users around the world to make connections with one another.

With the Online World Atlas, PEN hopes to become part of that revolution -- not least because good-news stories like Loewenstein's are balanced by increasingly frequent site closures and arrests of bloggers such as Moroccan Mohammed Erraji. The blogging revolution - like all change - needs _you_: send us links to news stories, new publications, great blogs, good books and interesting discussions.

As Loewenstein points out, "Allowing people to speak and write for themselves without a western filter is one of the triumphs of blogging. The online culture, disorganised and disjointed in its aims, is unlike that of any previous social movement." Like international blog collector sites Global Voices and The Literary Saloon, or Syrian aggregator al-mudawen, the World Atlas blog collects some of the new voices being heard in this fertile landscape -- and we want you to add yours.