As Beirut dons the mantle of UNESCO’s "World Book Capital City 2009" this year, Arabic novels are enjoying an unprecedented boom across the Middle East, breaking taboos on topics such as sex and religion.
The Lebanese capital was chosen as the world's literary centre this year "in the light of its focus on cultural diversity, dialogue and tolerance," according to the UNESCO selection committee.
There was no shortage of literary fodder as book readings and launches were scheduled across Beirut daily for the last week of April, when the title was officially conferred to the city. Among the books showcased were a wealth of the latest offerings from leading authors.
"More than 100 novels were up for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arab version of the Booker Prize) in 2008 to 2009 -- and that's an unprecedented number," said Fakhri Salih, a former jury member for the award and current chairman of Jordan's association of literary critics.
Delving into the taboo
The prize was awarded to Egyptian author Yussef Zeidan for his book Azazil, which centres on changes in religion in Arab countries around the Mediterranean in the fifth century AD.
A Lebanese university student browses an Arabic novel at a bookshop in Beirut on 21 April 2009. Beirut is to be nominated on April 23 as UNESCO "World Book Capital for the year 2009", at a time when the production of novels is booming in the Arab world, breaking taboos and prohibitions, but sorely missing readers.
The novel quickly gained popularity as a genre in 2002 when Egyptian writer Ala al-Aswany published the highly successful The Yaacoubian Building, a novel-turned-movie depicting regime corruption and the rise of Islamism in Egypt.
The publication was followed by a flurry of works that delve into taboo topics, primarily sexuality and religion, in countries where such books had been historically banned and where the novel was almost non-existent.
"The production of novels in Gulf countries exploded in recent years," says Rana Idriss, who heads the Beirut-based Al-Adab (Literature) publishing house.
In 2005, for example, Saudi author Rajaa Alsanea found fame with Girls of Riyadh, a book that traces the lives of four young women in the ultra-conservative kingdom.
"Individualism and the ego awoke in the Arab world through the novel, as though it were personal resistance against oppression," said Lebanese author Jabbour Doueihy. "The West likes Arab novels that deal with political oppression, women, or sexual taboos. It's looking for something exotic and is trying to discover the region through these books."
An industry finding its way
But although the Arab world is home to internationally acclaimed writers such as Egypt's Nagib Mahfuz and Sudan's Tayeb Salih, author of the 1966 hit Season of Migration to the North, reading has lost popularity.
"We cannot speak of an Arab world that likes to read," said publisher Idriss.
She estimates that even best-sellers pitch no more than 3,000 copies, a number well below hit sales in Europe or the United States -- and especially low considering the Arab world boasts a population of some 300 million.
Literary critics agree that new novelists have not yet reached the heights of legendary writers like Mahfuz -- who, in 1988, became the only Arab author to have been awarded the Nobel prize -- or Sudan's Salih.
"It's good to have new blood but many works out there cannot be qualified as novels, or are mediocre, relying only on audacity in talking about sex or religion," Idriss said.
Lebanese novelist Hassan Daoud, who edits daily newspaper Al-Mustaqbal's literary supplement, agrees.
"Some writers place speed over the basic criteria of novels," said Daoud. "Daring is great, but we should always ask ourselves whether all these novels dubbed 'audacious' will pass the test of time and join the Arab literary canon."
Arab and foreign audiences alike nonetheless continue to be enthralled by the 21st-century Arab novel -- incidentally at a time when Beirut has been dubbed the ninth world book capital.
"The Arab novel offers Westerners an 'anthropological' tool to understand the Arab world, which has been accused of terrorism since the September 11 attacks," Fakhri Salih said.
Idriss agrees that this new interest in the Arab world represents a possibility: because writing in Arabic has become "fashionable," more Arabic-speaking people may be inspired to write novels.
"We have begun to see hip young people engaging in the novel,” said Idriss. “It's a trend that is still timid but it gives us hope."
Rana Moussaoui/AFP/Expatica
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Novels are becoming an increasingly popular literary form in the Arab world and taboo subjects, such as religion and sexuality, are also slowly being addressed.
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