2009 Naguib Mahfouz Award announced

The View from Fez has the scoop as a Moroccan writer, Bensalem Himmich, professor of philosophy at the Mohammed V University in Rabat. He is the auhtor of over 26 books in both Arabic and French.

He has previously won the critics' prize (1990) for his novel "Le fou du pouvoir," a book elected by the Arab Union of Writers as one of the hundred best books of the 20th century. He also won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for his book Al-'Allamah (2001), "The Polymath," a book about the great Arab writer Ibn Khaldoun.

I can't find the title of the winning book anywhere, including the page at American University of Cairo, who publish the English translations of the winning books -- they're still on 2007.

Meet Denys Johnson-Davies, Arabic translator extraordinaire

The Directors of Arabia Books and Haus Publishing invite you to celebrate
Denys Johnson-Davies's
Memories in Translation: A Life Between the Lines of Arabic Literature

at the
bookHaus
70 Cadogan Place, London SW1X
on Friday, 29 May 2009, at 6.30pm

Denys Johnson-Davies will be in conversation with
Professor Bruce Ingham (Emeritus Professor of Arabic Dialect Studies, SOAS)

Described by Edward Said as ‘the leading Arabic-English translator of our time’, Denys Johnson-Davies has more than 30 volumes to his name, in a career spanning six decades. He has written about his life and work in Memories in Translation: A Life Between the Lines of Arabic Literature, a fascinating insight into his life as a translator of and contributor to literature from the Middle East. For his services to Arabic literature Denys Johnson-Davies was the first recipient of the coveted Sheikh Zayed Book Award Cultural Personality of the Year in 2007, awarded for ‘significant contributions to Arabic culture’.

During the Second World War he moved to Cairo, where he started befriending and translating Egyptian authors, amongst them the Nobel laureate novelist Naguib Mahfouz, the master short story writer Yusuf Idris and the playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim. He also promoted the Syrian writer Zakaria Tamir, the late Tayeb Salih from Sudan and the greatly missed Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. In the 1970s Heinemann invited Denys Johnson-Davies to be the Consultant for an Arab Author series. In subsequent decades his works were published by Quartet and the American University in Cairo Press. Arabia Books is proud to publish his latest collection of short stories from the United Arab Emirates.

In a Fertile Desert: Modern Writing from the United Arab Emirates, is the first volume of short stories to emerge from this commercially and culturally vibrant centre of the Arab world. Long before the riches of oil, this region was harsh, and the stories in this collection sum up the struggles of those early days; and the difficulties and dangers of bringing together the past and future of the UAE.

To RSVP for the event please email shop [at] hauspublishing.com

TLS plays Shahrzad

The new Arabian Nights translation has sent the TLS into a frenzy of attention over the Arabic-speaking world. This week's issue (5521), has a review of the luscious 3-volume set, while Robert Irwin reviews Rasheed El-Enany's Naguib Mahfouz: Egypt's Nobel Laureate (also reviewed by Ziad Elmarsafy last year in the THE) and William M. Hutchin's translation of Mahfouz's major early novel Cairo Modern.

Architecture, History & Social Studies, and Religion & Politics are all occupied with books about the Middle East, its culture and relation to the Western world, including Doris Behrens-Abouseif's Cairo of the Mamluks, which would make an interesting companion read to Mahfouz. In Fiction, acclaimed translator Marilyn Booth reviews Arabic Booker-winner Bahaa Taher's Love in Exile, as translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab, and Anita Sethi reviews Ashes of the Amazon, by the Brazilian Lebanese writer Milton Hatoum and transalted by John Gledson.

There's also a curious entry in Bibliography: Fernando Báez's A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq, whose historical and geographical spread suggestively identifies book-burning with the Middle East. In his review, Felix Pryor is dismissive of the books haphazard catalogue, but doesn't comment on the implications of the title. At the very least, it's not in keeping with the issue, which celebrates new(ish) publications from and about the long history of Arab culture.

Great Arabic Love Stories

As part of The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read bonanza, Ahdaf Soueif has selected five Arabic novels as part of today's "Love" issue. Soueif's punchy pull-out section is brilliant, claiming that "you could argue that the first narrative to emerge from what has come to be called the Middle East was the first love story of all time: the story of Isis and Osiris" and providing a swift history of writing about love in Arabic: most of it is excluded from the Guardian's selection because "the art form of record for the Arabs has always been poetry, and Arabic love poetry runs in an unbroken tradition from the 7th century until this day." On the other hand, the "novel form entered Arabic in the early 20th century and, as with most western imports of the time, it took root first in Egypt and greater Syria (now Syria, Palestine and Lebanon) - then in the rest of the Arab world," becoming "the art form of choice for depictions and critiques of societal norms and explorations of the great questions of the age."

Romantic love, argues Soueif, resonates in the novels she has chosen as it reveals questions of tradition vs. modernity, gendered and generational conflictions, ethnicity and sexuality, concluding that "the Arab novel is concerned with love, but cannot see it or deal with it independently of society." Her selections bear this out:

Latifa al-Zayyat: al-Bab al-Maftouh (1960)
Naguib Mahfouz: Cairo trilogy (1956-57)
Colette Khoury: Ayyam Ma'ah (1959)
Enayat el-Zayyat: Al-Hubb w'al-Samt (1967)
Layla al-Juhani: Jahiliyya (2006)

Bearing out the confluence of romance and politics, Khoury -- whose breakthrough novel shocked Syrian society with its depiction of female sexuality, in a semi-autobiographical account of her affair with Nizar Qabbani -- was last week announced as Syria's first ambassador to Lebanon, having served for a year as President Assad's literary advisor.

Mahfouz aside, Soueif emphasises the achievements of Arab women writers in using love and the erotic as prisms through which to consider social and political questions, particularly as conceptions of love have direct impact on their lives and imaginative possibilities. The "Love" issue is rich with women writers from around the world; it will be interesting to see if this gender parity is maintained in future issues (including Science Fiction and Fantasy). And The Cairo Trilogy aside, only Al-Bab Al-Maftouh has been translated into English (published by AUC). Al-Zayyat's novel is so influential that it has spurred a "We Are All Laila," a collective blog by young Egyptian feminists still fighting the same battles to open doors that confronted Laila, Al-Zayyat's protagonist, in 1960.

Also striking is that, apart from Amin Maalouf's Samarkand, no Arabic novels make the grade in the wider selection. Will Woman at Point Zero be selected for the "Family & Self" issue? And what Arabic novels do you think the panel could have considered for inclusion in their top 1000?

Reading Egypt

The Guardian's Book Blog are travelling around the world via literature, and it's Egypt's turn. Post your suggestions and thoughts here. You can add new discoveries to the Atlas here.

[Updated 2 Dec]

the tanjara posts about the Guardian's literary tourism (aren't we loving the photo of the very contemporary Pyramids?) with some pertinent observations and questions about how the Guardian's tour functions:

So far, the blog entry on Egypt has attracted only 17 comments (some of which weren't on Egyptian literature, but suggested a next stop on the 'tour'), much fewer than the 45 for Portugal, the previous stop, Nigeria (42), Australia (116 comments), Ireland (213). Of course it's not really appropiate to compare interest, as indicated by comments, in relatively newly available Egyptian fiction with that in literature from Anglophone countries.
Egypt was chosen as a destination by readers of the blog, but there was a miniscule number of votes. It got 2 votes, tied with the same number for a combined destination of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. As Egypt had been shortlisted a few times previously it was the final choice. Surely Moroccan literature (including poetry) is 'present' enough to merit inclusion in its own right rather than only as part of a general Maghreb entry. Or, if one insists on a general North African entry, why not expand to include Libya

So there's lots of space to make your opinion heard (unusual on a Guardian blog!) and put the names of classics and exciting new novels out there... Great to see Bahaa Taher getting attention alongside Naguib Mahfouz, and also Khalid al-Khamissy.

If you're lucky enough to be in Cairo, Kamal Rohaym is reading from his novel "Ayam al-shataat" on Wednesday 8th December at the last Sphinx Agency salon of the year. Rohaym won a prize for the first novel, "Quloub munhaka" (The Muslim Jew), which is being translating into German at the moment. The next big thing?!