Jordanian court convicts poet over Quranic verses

The Kuwait Times has the story concerning Islam Samhan, whose love poems apparently incorporated suras of the Qu'ran. He was first charged with apostasy in October 2008 according to The National, Samhan, a journalist, is a popular reader in Amman and the ministry of culture initially bought 50 copies of his collection. Samhan denies all charges, arguing that

"the Quran is in Arabic and I am influenced by my language and its rich terminology. Where I grew up, the Quran was sung and its music is still playing in my ears. I have read the Quran, and the Arabic language is that of the Quran.”

The collection, In a Slim Shadow, is not available in English, but the National says that in one poem, Samhan has his beloved address God, which his critics say personifies God. In another the woman is talking to God while lying beneath a see-through sheet. Samhan said he was referring to the gods of Greek mythology.

World Literature/Literature and the World: Three Views

It's the beginning of literary festival season, and Chad Post at Three Percent has been travelling to many of them, including Montréal's Metropolis Bleu festival, which claims to be the world's first multilingual literary festival; in this rather breathless post he contemplates Canada's "two solitudes" and the implications for global publishing at large -- and gives a sense of the new transnationality of the publishing business.

Over at NewPages, Denise offers a post on the "conundrum" of world literature that picks up on two recent articles about the topic, including Pankaj Mishra's Author, Author column from last Saturday's Guardian Review, which offers a Marxist analysis of "world" literature as a globalised market. Her other pick is a Reuters article concerning the lack of circulation of contemporary Chinese writing. One of the article's sub-heads refers to the "Banned in China" brand, supported by a quote from Jo Lusby of Penguin:

Oftentimes 'banned in China' is the only selling point publishers can use to communicate what the book is about. I don't think it's surprising it's not necessarily the big literary tomes from China which are making it out, but it's the more racy, pacey books.

While censorship may help foreign rights sales, it still "hurts" writers' careers inside China, as Yan Geling comments in the article. The global market is not bringing freedom of expression to the country, in other words.

An article on the AFP about Arabic literature suggests that the fashion for translating banned or controversial books is an extension of Orientalism, whereby only works that conform to (and flatter) Western notions of oppression and liberation get picked up for translation. Lebanese author Jabbour Doueihy makes a sharp critique of the current boom in Arabic novels when he tells the AFP,

Individualism and the ego awoke in the Arab world through the novel, as though it were personal resistance against oppression.

Fakhri Salih, a former jury member for the award and current chairman of Jordan's association of literary critics added that the small upturn in translation, media attention and international funding for Arabic novels stems from a political motivation:

The Arab novel offers Westerners an 'anthropological' tool to understand the Arab world, which has been accused of terrorism since the September 11 attacks.

Yet this 'anthropological' depth of understanding is exactly what Reuters argue that translations from contemporary Chinese literature could offer to Western readers, rather than the equally 'anthropological' titillations of sexual explicitness. NewBooks is right: world literature is a conundrum. Where all the articles agree is that translation is of paramount importance for increasing access internationally, and that the motivations of literature's gatekeepers (both state and corporate) have to be scrutinised, as they have power over what we read and how.

Bedell Banned in Dubai

Guardian journalist and novelist Geraldine Bedell wrote in the Guardian Books blog yesterday that her forthcoming novel The Gulf Between Us has been banned from the Dubai book fair, where she had hoped to launch it. Bedell comments:

It seemed a perfect fit. Mine is the only novel I know of in English (but I can't think there are many in Arabic, either) set in a Gulf emirate. Most of the action takes place in a small fictional state called Hawar, which means either "little camel" or "dispute" in Arabic.

This "hawar", coming close on the heels of the 20th anniversary of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, will undoubtedly draw attention to the novel. Margaret Atwood has withdrawn from the festival in protest against the censorship of Bedell's novel. Other novelists are considering their invitations, including children's writers Anthony Horowitz and Lauren Child (perhaps as much at the suggestion from the fair to Bedell's publishers Penguin that they consider launching a children's book [read: harmless] instead -- oblivious to the excellent, contentious and controversial children's and YA fiction currently being published). As the festival is being funded by the Emirates Airline Foundation, a boycott of Arsenal might also be considered.

Speaking to the Guardian today, Jonathan Heawood, director of English PEN, said:

Ideally a festival like this should be a chance for authors from all cultures and different backgrounds to come together, share work and exchange experiences. A literary festival should be about cultural exchange, and clearly this one isn't.

Bedell suggests that the "comically long list" of reasons for banning the novel from the fair omit - and in fact disguise - the decision-makers' homophobia (the novel features a gay sheikh). The author of Saudi-set Girls of Riyadh faced a backlash for her portrayal of the sexual double standards among the "velvet class," including a minor character who is a lesbian. The author of Al Akharoun, a Saudi novel with a lesbian protagonist, has to use a pseudonym. So Bedell's guess has some precedents in the region to support it. Al Akharoun was published in Arabic by Dar al Saqi, who also publish Hani Naskshabandi, a Saudi journalist and novelist currently living in Dubai.

I haven't read The Gulf Between Us, but I'd be curious as to how it compares in its worldview and style to the fiction covered by Laila Mohammed Saleh's Women Writers of the Islands and Arabian Gulf, and to the fiction and non-fiction writing being fostered in UAE by the al-Owais foundation, most of which is not available in English translation. Anyone familiar with writing from UAE who can offer an insight?

And a challenge to freedom of speech in Liverpool...

Booksurfer has the details of raids and arrests on protest literature stalls on Liverpool's Church Street, and of a protest in response on Saturday 18th October.

Bertolt Brecht's FBI File

Censorship, American WWII style, from the PoetryPolitic blog.

Pen still mightier

English PEN have issued a statement supporting Martin Rynja, publisher at Gibson Square, whose offices were firebombed this weekend, allegedly in connection with Rynja's decision to publish Sherry Jones' The Jewel of Medina. Authors Nadeem Aslam, Monica Ali and Hanif Kureishi have all lent their voices to support Rynja's decision.

With a new documentary about Grove Press editor (and regular defendant in obscenity trials) Barney Rosset, Obscene, due to be released, and Rosset himself about to receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation in honor of his many contributions to American publishing, it's a stark and timely reminder that publishers and editors in the liberal West still struggle for free speech, while their counterparts elsewhere in the world -- like Muhammad al-Sharkawi, blogger and founder of the Malamih publishing house in Cairo -- are subject to detention and state-sponsored brutality.