The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction

Arabic-Speaking Countries

Arabic is only one of the official languages in a wide corridor of countries stretching from Morocco to Iraq, and these countries’ cultural, historical, and political differences have, in turn, led to different literary traditions. Poetry was long the preferred literary form, and even though the region’s storytelling tradition extends far beyond the Arabian Nights, the novel is considered a relative upstart. Until recently, little contemporary fiction of any kind had emerged from the Arab Gulf States. In the nations of the Maghreb, French remains the dominant literary language in regard to the fiction that reaches Europe and America. Egypt, with the region’s largest Arab-speaking population and a geographically central position, has generally been the hub of Arabic literature and also where the novel first took hold in the Arab world. Throughout the region, civil unrest and political crackdowns, along with a tradition of very harsh censorship, also have forced many writers to work in exile.

Local political censorship, too, has had a chilling effect on writers in the region. Ironically, those works that are critical of Arab regimes, often by authors in exile and published abroad, are those most likely to reach Western audiences, giving a somewhat misleading impression of the Arabic literary scene. A relatively underdeveloped and fragmented publishing industry and a small book-buying public have also limited the growth of Arabic literature and literary culture. Religious pressure continues to have some influence over what is published and can be sold, but in the modern global economy, writers and readers are increasingly able to circumvent many of these controls. While outright risqué or blasphemous works may not be readily available in many Arabic markets, more and more Arabic writers seem to be testing the boundaries of the permissible. The wave of popular revolt across the region that began in December 2010 and saw the overthrow of several long-established regimes, including that of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, will certainly lead to changes in publishing and book selling. The resulting wider availability of a far greater range of titles, coupled with greater artistic freedom and less censorship, may well lead to a literary boom similar to the one that began in China in the early 1980s.

The written language used in the Arabic-speaking states is essentially the same, but the spoken vernacular varies greatly, and recently more authors have turned to the local street Arabic in their writing, rather than the standard Arabic that has long dominated the literature. Unfortunately, these differences are almost completely lost in English translation, even though they are very obvious to native readers.

Until Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, only a few contemporary works of Arabic fiction (many of them by Mahfouz) were being translated into English annually—an average of fewer than three a year since the end of World War II. This number has increased considerably since 1988, and since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and now the Arab Spring, interest in the region and its literature has grown. Whether this burgeoning Arabic literature will now truly establish itself in the global literary market, however, remains to be seen.

Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) remains the towering figure of Arabic fiction, especially when considered from an outside vantage point. Extensively translated, the breadth of his work is remarkable and ranges from historical fiction of the Pharaonic age to realistic novels of twentieth-century Cairo life such as The Cairo Trilogy (1956–1957, English 1989–1992) to more experimental fiction. His work is truly representative of an astonishing variety of Arabic fiction.

Beginning with Khan al-Khalili (1945, English 2008) and Midaq Alley (1947, English 1966, 2011), Mahfouz wrote several social realist novels set in specific neighborhoods (hence the titles) in present-day Cairo. His greatest success was his broader view in The Cairo Trilogy, consisting of Palace Walk (1956, English 1989), Palace of Desire (1957, English 1991), and Sugar Street (1957, English 1992). With its resemblance in both volume and manner to the long Russian and French novels of the nineteenth century, The Cairo Trilogy is the most readily approachable of Mahfouz’s novels and a good place to start for either Mahfouz or Arabic fiction in general.

The Cairo Trilogy is a sweeping epic set in twentieth-century Egypt. It is a family saga, with a father, al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who is strict in his own household but much more liberal in his indulgences outside it. His family’s home at Palace Walk is both fortress and cocoon, especially for the overprotected women who can barely venture from it, but even here a rapidly changing world cannot be kept at bay. Even though al-Sayyid Ahmad tries to steel the household against the changes all around, he is ultimately largely unable to, the fates of the various family members being a microcosm of Egypt in those decades. Mahfouz slowly and steadily stirs this swirl of stories, the turbulence of the times, in both the neighborhood and all of Cairo, preventing the home and family from remaining completely isolated. The Cairo Trilogy is both one of the great family-novels and one of the great city-novels of the twentieth century. Beginning with the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, Mahfouz’s deliberate pace allows even those unfamiliar with those events to get a sense of what the country and its citizens went through and the various forces at play, from Islamic fundamentalism to a Western-oriented secularism.

Several of Mahfouz’s earliest novels were set in the Pharaonic period, but in works such as Khufu’s Wisdom (1939, English 2003), he is not overly concerned about historical accuracy. Instead, Mahfouz is more interested in myth and telling a good story, unlike the detail-obsessed historical fiction more common nowadays. Mahfouz also explores a Pharaonic subject in the far more mature work Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth (1985, English 1998). This novel looks at the obsession with faith as the pharaoh Akhenaten renounces the state’s pantheistic religion and tries to impose his own monotheistic vision, catastrophically undermining the established order. Despite some repetition in the accounts of Akhenaten’s life, Mahfouz is skilled enough to use the narrator, Meriamun, to collect information about the pharaoh from different sources in order to balance these complementary accounts to make a greater whole.

The historical echoes in other novels are even fainter. In The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (1983, English 1992), Mahfouz sends his narrator, nicknamed Ibn Fattouma, on a journey reminiscent of Gulliver’s Travels. The societies and political regimes that Ibn Fattouma encounters serve as slightly simplified and exaggerated counterparts of those in the contemporary world. Though sometimes too quickly sketched, this is, along with Arabian Nights and Days (1982, English 1995), one of Mahfouz’s most appealing works. Arabian Nights and Days draws on its literary antecedent, using characters and familiar stories from the original A Thousand and One Nights but weaving them into a new variation on the original’s premises by having the sultan agree to marry Shahrazad, thereby ending the threat of murder that always hung over her storytelling.

All of Mahfouz’s panoramic realist novels, including Midaq Alley, The Beginning and the End (1949, English 1985), and the allegorical Children of the Alley (1967, serialized 1959, English 1995, previously translated as Children of Gebelawi, 1981, revised 1997), are worthwhile. His later, less expansive novels offer interesting slices of Egyptian life as well. The Thief and the Dogs (1961, English 1984) is a revenge thriller with an ambiguous hero, marking a shift from a realist to a more impressionistic style. Many works revolve around a group of individuals brought together, rather than a single family. Miramar (1967, English 1978), for example, takes place at a boarding house, and in Adrift on the Nile (1966, English 1993), a group of friends frequently gather on a houseboat. The changing social and political situation is reflected most explicitly in works like Karnak Café (1974, English 2007), about the 1967 War, and The Day the Leader Was Killed (1985, English 1997), the story leading up to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Elsewhere, Mahfouz zeroes in on the more mundane, as in his tale of the career of an ambitious bureaucrat, Respected Sir (1975, English 1986).

In many of his works, Mahfouz presents the story from different perspectives, and in Wedding Song (1981, English 1984), which is set in the theater world, he uses this technique to emphasize the overlap between art and reality. The multigenerational saga Morning and Evening Talk (1987, English 2007) goes considerably further. Each of its sixty-seven chapters is a biography of one member of the three families that dominate the book, arranged not chronologically but alphabetically according to the names of the characters. Although the stories overlap, as certain facts are recounted from different perspectives, the presentation is discontinuous, reminiscent of Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch. Covering two centuries of Egyptian history, Morning and Evening Talk is like an album of randomly ordered snapshots, with the larger picture emerging as the connections accumulate. A far cry from the Pharaonic novels, The Cairo Trilogy, or Children of the Alley, this is a remarkable late-career effort of an author still seeking new paths in his fiction.

Despite its specific references to Egyptian conditions, the atmosphere in Sun’allah Ibrahim’s (b. 1937) novella The Committee (1981, English 2001) resembles Kafka’s The Trial, with its uncomprehending individual confronting a bureaucratic apparatus. Trying to please, he can never be sure that his answers are those wanted, and this allegory suffers from stretching too far, as Ibrahim mocks everything from the state to that ultimate capitalist symbol, Coca-Cola. Most of Ibrahim’s fiction has an ideological element, but his presentation of his political positions is creative. The chapters of Zaat (1992, English 2001) alternate between describing the life of the eponymous protagonist, a representative middle-class woman, and documentary material of late-twentieth-century Egypt in the form of newspaper clippings—headlines, reports, quotations. This layering of personal and public creates a full portrait of Egyptian life, especially in its constant reminder of the burden of widespread corruption on society.

• Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898–1987) and Yusuf Idris (1927–1991) were early influential Egyptian authors almost completely overshadowed by the prolific Mahfouz. Al-Hakim remains better known for his plays, and Idris is best known for his short stories.

• The Lamp of Umm Hashim (English 2004) is a collection of Yahya Hakki’s (1905–1992) stories.

Gamal al-Ghitani’s (1945–2015) Zayni Barakat (1974, serialized 1970–1971, English 1988) is set in the sixteenth century. It is about a powerful state official’s attempts at reform and the suspicion with which it is met, which has parallels with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rule during the 1950s and 1960s. This is imaginative historic fiction at its best. The Zafarani Files (1976, English 2008) is al-Ghitani’s own entertaining version of the Cairo neighborhood novel. The more elusive, often almost mystical, Pyramid Texts (1994, English 2007) is built up in pyramid form, with the first chapter—base and foundation—being the longest and each successive one becoming shorter until a final peak of only three words.

Alaa Al Aswany’s (b. 1957) The Yacoubian Building (2002, English 2004) quickly became one of the most popular modern Arabic novels, both in the region and in translation. In it, Aswany follows the daily lives of several of the residents of the once grand but now somewhat rundown Yacoubian building, ranging from the servants who live on the roof to politicians and businessmen. Mildly sensational, with sex and other intrigues, Aswany’s novel is consistently gripping. The short chapters jump from story to story, constantly leaving the reader dangling, curious as to what will happen next. Aswany is not a great artist, and much of the book is simplistic but still has more than enough to please. A similar template does not work nearly as well in Chicago (2007, English 2008), a novel about Egyptians abroad. The individual and overlapping stories—of students, émigrés, and their various and often ambiguous relationships with Egypt and the Egyptian authorities—are interesting, but Aswany’s Chicago is flat and unconvincing, especially compared with the vivid, dusty Cairo that is such an impressive backdrop in The Yacoubian Building.

• Nawal El Saadawi’s (b. 1931) passionate fiction is about women victimized in systems dominated by men.

• Mohamed El-Bisatie’s (1937–2012) creative fiction is frequently about Egyptian village life but often with unusual spins. An example is the novel Over the Bridge (2004, English 2006), in which a bureaucrat invents a town on paper, thereby allowing him to embezzle government funds meant for it, only to soon find matters getting out of hand.

• Ibrahim Abdel Meguid’s (b. 1946) realist novels are about Egyptian life in different eras of the twentieth century.

• Miral al-Tahawy’s (b. 1968) early novels use her Bedouin background, while Brooklyn Heights (2010, English 2012) explores the contemporary immigrant experience.

• Rama and the Dragon (1980, English 2002) is the title of Edwar alKharrat’s (1926–2015) demanding avant-garde classic.

• Ahmed Alaidy (b. 1974) uses fast-paced, youthful experimentation in his Being Abbas el Abd (2003, English 2006).

• Each of the fifty-eight chapters in Taxi (2007, English 2008, revised 2011), by Khaled Al Khamissi (b. 1962), is an encounter with a different Cairo taxi driver, each with his own story to tell.

• The English-language fiction by Egyptian-born Ahdaf Soueif (b. 1950) includes The Map of Love (1999), in which the Egypt of the late twentieth century is an echo of that of the late nineteenth century.

Many Western readers think of Muammar el-Qaddafi when they think of Libya, but little available contemporary Libyan fiction offers much insight into his regime or the nation as it adapts to life after Qaddafi. Libyan-raised Hisham Matar’s (b. 1970) In the Country of Men (2006) presents a child’s perspective of life under Qaddafi in 1979, but while the nine-year-old protagonist’s incomprehension of much around him adds to the novel’s ominous feel, Matar falls short in both his approach and his description of conveying much that is unique to Libya.

The fiction of the Tuareg author Ibrahim al-Koni (b. 1948) does not directly touch on the political, but its evocation of desert life in all its surprising variety is some of the most compelling Arabic fiction being written today. Al-Koni’s allegorical tales are dominated by their setting, which is spectacularly different from what most readers have ever known and far from the monotone one might expect regarding the desert. The dominance of and respect for nature are brilliantly reflected in the human relationships and interactions depicted in his work, as it necessitates a mutual dependency unlike that in an urban setting. Both the difficulty of striking a balance and the dangers posed by the intrusion of and change expected by those unfamiliar with the ways that have long ensured survival frequently figure in al-Koni’s works. Many of his novels also have a mystical element, as in The Seven Veils of Seth (2003, English 2008) and Anubis (2002, English 2005), mixed with enough realism—and magical realism—to strike the right balance.

Ethan Chorin’s anthology Translating Libya (English 2008) introduces a larger number of modern Libyan writers, and it differs from most anthologies in giving a more personal perspective on the material through Chorin’s extensive editorial descriptions of his efforts to put together the collection. This adds another dimension to the anthology and helps better acquaint readers with the country.

As in many of the former French colonies in Africa, French continues to be widely spoken and read in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, especially in higher education and business. Much of the fiction by writers from the Maghreb nations is written in French as well, and the Algerian author Assia Djebar (1936–2015) was even admitted to the Académie française and made one of its so-called immortals who are charged with overseeing the language.

Kateb Yacine’s (1929–1989) Nedjma (1956, English 1961) is a foundational text of Maghreb literature. The title character is an elusive figure, her mixed and uncertain parentage and the destiny which some of the men obsessed with her seek to impose on her meant to make her representative of Algeria itself. Kateb’s presentation, which mixes the realistic and allegorical, is often said to resemble William Faulkner’s. The novel blurs chronology and facts and shifts perspectives, giving it an occasionally frustrating opacity, though the dialogue and scenes have poetic power. Moreover, Kateb’s ambiguity is clearly intended, and the book’s shift in styles enabled North African fiction to move away from a strictly realistic mode. Nedjma, meaning star in Arabic, is also the pseudonym of the Moroccan author of the sensationalistic best seller The Almond: The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman (2004, English 2005). One of the more explicit novels to come out of the region, it offers an uneasy mix of female empowerment and exotic soft porn.

Tahar Djaout (1954–1993) was among the many prominent intellectuals who fell victim to the Islamic fundamentalist terror in Algeria in the 1990s, and several of his novels capture the atmosphere of violent disintegration during those years, most notably in his posthumous The Last Summer of Reason (1999, English 2001). More sad than angry, this incomplete text describes the slow crushing of all freedoms under totalitarian rule. The story revolves around a bookseller who tries to maintain his way of life and his trade even while everything around him succumbs to the oppressive burdens of life under totalitarian rule. The novel is all the more poignant because of Djaout’s own fate, and for an unfinished work, it is surprisingly effective and compelling. The Watchers (1991, English 2002), an allegory of an individual’s limited power against the state, was written and takes place in a time when terror was not yet omnipresent (as it was with the outbreak of civil war in 1991), but suspicion and fear already are widespread. The protagonist, Mahfoudh Lemdjad, invents a loom, a modernization that religious fundamentalists see as a threat. The state apparatus obstructs Mahfoudh at every turn, but he perseveres and is able to present his invention at an international fair, where it is hailed as great advance. This validation forces the government to switch tacks, but instead of admitting fault, it places the blame elsewhere.

Kamel Daoud’s (b. 1970) The Meursault Investigation (2013, English 2015) builds on Albert Camus’s classic novel The Stranger (also published as The Outsider; 1942, English 1946, 1982, 1988 [2], 2012). In The Stranger, Meursault kills a man who is identified only as an Arab. In The Meursault Investigation, Daoud gives the victim a name—Musa—and a younger brother. Many decades later, it is this brother, Harun, who reclaims the story in describing the events and their consequences from his family’s perspective. Daoud’s story goes considerably beyond a simple critique of colonialism, as Harun’s indictment of conditions goes on to include those in independent Algeria.

Yasmina Khadra’s (b. 1956) popular novels are set in present-day places of conflict. The Swallows of Kabul (2002, English 2004), Cousin K (2003, English 2013), The Attack (2005, English 2006), and The Sirens of Baghdad (2006, English 2007) all revolve around characters driven to extremes by extreme conditions. Khadra balances his stories with characters who desperately try to cling to their humanity, using plausible and understandable cases of radicalization in almost intolerable conditions. The didactic intent is often too obvious in these tales, as the events are too carefully arranged to convey his messages. Nonetheless, his gray—rather than black-and-white—pictures of Islamic fundamentalism are a welcome contrast to the many one-sided accounts in circulation. Even though the books are rather simplistic, Khadra is a good storyteller, and his writing is polished if not entirely natural. Rougher and more hardboiled, Khadra’s series of crime novels featuring Inspector Llob, take place in a violent Algeria where politics is part of every crime and determines how justice is served. They feel more convincing and present a conflict that is not as well known. Dead Man’s Share (2004, English 2009), set in 1988, a few years before the Algerian civil war, is a good introduction to the character and series. The novel describes the pervasive corruption in a deceptively tranquil Algiers that has taken hold of all aspects of Algerian life that Khadra clearly sees as the root of the unrest that later permeated the country.

Although Driss Chraïbi (1926–2007) left Morocco at the end of World War II and eventually settled in France, his fiction is largely set in his homeland and often deals with the tensions between French and Moroccan culture and the lingering effects of colonialism. The Butts (1955, English 1983), a frequently grim novel, is one of the first fictional accounts of North African immigrant life. A recurring character in his fiction, Chraïbi’s Inspector Ali, a Moroccan policeman, is introduced in Flutes of Death (1981, English 1985), in which he is sent on a mission in the mountain region. The novel contrasts urban and very rural life and pits the would-be modern state apparatus, itself hardly an inspiring institution, against Morocco’s ingrained and ostensibly backward traditions. The center of Inspector Ali (1991, English 1994) is the fictional author of the Inspector Ali books, Brahim Orourke, and his family. This is one of several comic installments in a series in which Chraïbi plays with the detective-story genre.

MYSTERIES WRITTEN IN ARABIC

Although there have been several crime series by Francophone Arab writers like Yasmina Khadra and Driss Chraïbi, until recently almost no mysteries were written in Arabic. Moroccan Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s (b. 1958) The Final Bet (2001, English 2008), which criticizes the still prevalent systems of law and order and their travesties of justice, is the first Arabic detective novel to be translated into English.

In The Sand Child (1985, English 1987) and its sequel, The Sacred Night (1987, English 1989), Tahar Ben Jelloun (b. 1944) offers an uncommon exploration of gender roles in the Arab world. The novels’ central figure is a girl who was raised as a boy named Ahmed before eventually reassuming a female identity and taking the name Zahra. These are among the more intriguing novels focusing on this aspect of Moroccan Islamic society, touching on everything from inheritance laws to violence against women. Ben Jelloun’s other novels also tackle social issues, from the insidious rot presented in Corruption (1994, English 1997), in which the protagonist tries to avoid being part of a system in which bribery is nearly universal, to the harrowing prison account found in This Blinding Absence of Light (2001, English 2002). Despite Ben Jelloun’s manifest interest in dealing with social issues—obvious from titles like Corruption and the premises of many of his novels—his is considerably more than simply politically engaged fiction.

• The collection of stories The Savage Night (1995, English 2001) is a good introduction to the fiction of Mohammed Dib (1920–2003), and his novel in verse, L.A. Trip (2003, English 2003), is an engaging (if atypical) curiosity.

• Five decades worth of Assia Djebar’s (1936–2015) novels, focused on women’s lives in the Maghreb in both modern and historical times, are well worth reading.

• Bensalem Himmich’s (b. 1949) historical novels include The Theocrat (1989, English 2005) and The Polymath (1997, English 2004).

• Leila Abouzeid’s (b. 1950) fiction of Moroccan life includes the collection Year of the Elephant (1984, serialized 1983, English 1989) and The Last Chapter (2000, English 2000).

• Laila Lalami’s (b. 1968) fiction about Morocco, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005) and Secret Son (2009), is written in English.

Many twentieth-century African novels center on a protagonist who returns to his homeland, city, or village after studying in Europe or America and is struck by the contrast between the two worlds, finding himself no longer at home in either. Among these often autobiographical works, Tayeb Salih’s (1929–2009) Season of Migration to the North (1966, English 1969) stands out and is certainly one of the great Arabic novels of recent times. The novel is a doubled tale of the return of both the nameless narrator and Mustafa Sa’eed, who has traveled a similar path from the Sudan to England and back. As he tells his own story, the narrator pieces together Sa’eed’s journey. Salih’s elliptical presentation reads like a thriller and allows enough ambiguity that no easy lessons or morals can be drawn. Salih’s other works, including the two stories from the 1970s collected in Bandarshah (English 1996), are worthwhile but do not approach Season of Migration to the North.

Tarek Eltayeb (b. 1959) was born in Egypt to Sudanese parents and emigrated to Austria in the 1980s. His novel The Palm House (2006, English 2012) features a narrator, Hamza, whose background is similar to his own. While much of the novel presents the African emigrant experience in Austria, Hamza also describes his childhood and youth in Sudan in a wide-ranging work expanding on Eltayeb’s earlier and less polished novel, Cities Without Palms (1992, English 2009).

SUDANESE WRITERS

Both Jamal Mahjoub (b. 1960) and Leila Aboulela (b. 1964) are Anglophone writers who have strong Sudanese ties and emphasize the multinational in their fiction.

Not surprisingly, the Lebanese civil war and the continued political instability feature in much of the recent fiction from the country. In early works like Little Mountain (1977, English 1989), Elias Khoury (b. 1948) still seems to be deciding how to approach his subject of political turmoil. This short novel is presented from several perspectives and uses repetition as a way to make the events easier to grasp. Khoury’s novels rarely unfold in a straightforward manner and often come together as collections of stories and episodes that meld together on his large canvases. The broadest of these, Gate of the Sun (1998, English 2005) and Yalo (2002, English 2008), about the Palestinian and Lebanese experiences of recent decades, include tales that spiral far beyond the individuals at their centers. While Khoury’s lyrical language can be distracting, it is a style similar to that found in much recent Arabic fiction, and thus his novels are a good introduction to contemporary Middle Eastern fiction.

Rashid al-Daif’s (b. 1945) Dear Mr. Kawabata (1995, English 1999) is cleverly presented as an epistolary novel addressed to the Japanese Nobel laureate. Left with nothing else but memory, the novel’s narrator reflects on his life and is drawn to the distant and dead Yasunari Kawabata whose fictional world stands in such contrast to violent and unsettled Lebanon. As in Dear Mr. Kawabata, the protagonist in Learning English (1998, English 2007) is named Rashid, and in this novel, the death of the protagonist’s father inspires reflection. Though he fully embraces modernity, is eager for the latest technological gizmos, and views English as the must-know language, the Rashid of Learning English also finds that he cannot entirely escape his roots and the customs and traditions that define his family. Al-Daif is particularly good at describing the tension between the traditional and the modern world that exists alongside the larger political and religious conflicts in Lebanon. His more abstract novels, such as This Side of Innocence (1997, English 2001), in which the narrator is held and questioned by the authorities without fully understanding what they want from him, feels more generic, but al-Daif generally frames quite well the issues his characters face.

• Hanan al-Shaykh’s (b. 1945) novels, such as The Story of Zahra (1980, English 1986) and the epistolary Beirut Blues (1992, English 1995), are about daily life in Beirut.

PALESTINE AND JORDAN

Just as the poet Adonis (b. 1930) is Syria’s internationally best-known author, poet Mahmoud Darwish (1942–2008) is Palestine’s most esteemed author. Several other writers from the region deserve attention as well. Ghassan Kanafani’s (1936–1972) novellas All That’s Left to You (1966, English 1990) and Men in the Sun (1963, English 1978) are still among the best descriptions of the recent Palestinian experience. Although the symbolism in the memorable Men in the Sun verges on being simplistic, Kanafani’s story of three men representing three different generations trying to reach Kuwait in the hope of bettering their and their loved ones’ lives is still very effective. The three men’s motives and hopes differ, but all see their only opportunity elsewhere, and their journey is a devastating allegory of post-1948 Palestinian life.

Kanafani’s narratives, with their intentional vagueness, are not conventional realist novels. Ibrahim Nasrallah’s (b. 1954) Prairies of Fever (1985, English 1993) and Inside the Night (1992, English 2007), however, push the novel’s form even further, employing a lyrical, fragmentary presentation that often resembles sequences of prose poems. In Prairies of Fever, the protagonist, Muhammad Hammad, goes to Saudi Arabia as a teacher. Nasrallah presents his experience in a mix of voices, moving between the real and fantasy, with the two becoming increasingly indistinguishable. Inside the Night skips back and forth between the present and the past in another mosaic of the Palestinian experience. While far from straightforward works of fiction, both novels convey the frustrations of life in uncertain conditions, the characters’ alienation as expatriates, and their keen awareness of limitations of life in their homeland.

• Emile Habiby’s (1921–1996) The Secret Life of Saeed, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist (1974, English 1982) is a comic story of a Palestinian who remains in Israel.

• The novels of Jabra I. Jabra (1919–1994) are noteworthy.

• Anglo-Jordanian author Fadia Faqir’s (b. 1956) novels are insightful works about modern life and culture in the Middle East.

Rafik Schami (b. 1946) left Syria in 1970 to study in Germany, where he still lives today. Despite completing a Ph.D. in chemistry, he found true success as an author writing in German, his fifth language (along with Aramaic, Arabic, French, and English). Schami’s fiction meets the Arabian Nights expectations of Western readers, especially in Damascus Nights (1989, English 1993) and The Calligrapher’s Secret (2008, English 2010). Set in 1959 Damascus, a great storyteller in Damascus Nights has lost his voice to a spell, and his friends must spin their own stories in order to help him regain it. Playing with the genre, Schami creates his own agreeable fiction, which includes the typically abstract morals of age-old tales as well as some commentary on the Syrian and Arab politics of the time. Taking place during the short-lived Syrian-Egyptian union known as the United Arab Republic, Nasser’s pan-Arab ideals and the realities of a police state make an interesting backdrop to the stories. The Dark Side of Love (2004, English 2009) is the story of two lovers from rival clans, one Catholic and the other Orthodox, which serves as the background for an immense study of Syrian life and politics through 1970. Parts of the protagonist’s life story also resemble Schami’s own, as Farid Mushtak also was educated in a monastery, is a member of the Communist Party, and eventually flees to Germany. But unlike Schami, Farid was imprisoned in one of Syria’s most notorious prison camps. In this novel, Schami is particularly critical of the endless cycle of petty revenge and honor killings that is so deeply ingrained in Syrian life.

• The novels by Hanna Mina (b. 1924), the leading Syrian author, include his autobiographical Fragments of Memory (1975, English 1993) and Sun on a Cloudy Day (1973, English 1997).

Zakaria Tamer (b. 1931) is one of the leading Arabic short-story writers. The Hedgehog (English 2009) contains tales connected to the title piece (2005), about a young boy’s wildly imagined world, as well as the stories previously collected in Tigers on the Tenth Day (English 1985). This is a good example of Tamer’s rich satirical talents. The more cohesive collection of more than five dozen very short stories, Breaking Knees (2002, English 2008), is almost overwhelming in its quick sequence of scenes from all walks of life, with many of the stories barely a page long and some only a paragraph. Despite the brevity of these tales and the fact that many have no obvious conclusion, they are entirely satisfying. Behind an almost plain style, Tamer slyly inserts his characters and situations into suggestive stories. Often instead of arriving at a neatly tied-together end, enough is left to the imagination for the tale to continue to unfold in the reader’s mind.

During the nearly quarter of a century that Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) was the president of the Iraqi state, beginning in 1979, the country became increasingly isolated, first caught up in an almost decade-long war with neighboring Iran in the 1980s and then cutting itself off further from the international community with its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and its defeat in the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. Since 2003, the American-led invasion of Iraq and the removal of Hussein and the Baath Party from power, the protracted presence of a large number of American and also British troops in the country, as well as widespread media coverage, have led to greater interest in local conditions. Although the increasingly repressive regime limited artistic freedom, the fiction that has recently become available in translation ranges from that by long-time exiles such as Fadhil al-Azzawi (b. 1940) to novels attributed to Hussein himself, such as the grotesque allegory Zabiba and the King (2000, English 2004).

With its backdrop of the Baath Party’s rise to power in the early 1960s, Fuad al-Takarli’s (1927–2008) family epic The Long Way Back (1980, English 2001) is a good introduction to recent Iraqi history and contemporary fiction. Taking place in a multigenerational household and told from various perspectives and with its focus on domestic life, al-Takarli’s novel offers a striking picture of a country in which political instability and uncertainty cloud so much of daily life. Fadhil al-Azzawi’s much more imaginative The Last of the Angels (1992, English 2007), which combines dark comedy and elements of magical realism, also is set in the time before Saddam Hussein came to power and is one of the region’s most impressive works of fiction. The book is set in the northern city of Kirkuk in the 1950s as the monarchy is nearing its end and Britain’s control of the oil industry is making it the dominant power in the area. Al-Azzawi’s humorous exploration of the conflicts between the authorities and the local community is entertaining and full of colorful characters.

A l-Azzawi’s more realist story of life in detention, Cell Block Five (1972, English 2008), seems unusual for a Middle Eastern prison novel, especially given the reputation of Iraqi regimes. There is little here that is brutal or horrifying. As in The Last of the Angels, al-Azzawi is more interested in presenting community dynamics than in concentrating on the system’s repressive aspects, although it is possible to imagine from the system he describes the small steps that led to it. This darker side of Iraqi life and history is clearly presented in Sinan Antoon’s (b. 1967) I’jaam (2004, English 2007), which takes place in Iraq during the 1980s and offers a more brutal depiction of prison life. Antoon conveys the paranoia of the regime and the viciousness of its often arbitrary justice: almost everyone lives in fear, even though some personal freedom is still possible. A prefatory note explains that in the original Arabic, the prisoner’s manuscript that constitutes this account was written without diacritical marks, meaning that there is considerable ambiguity regarding the meaning of many of the words in the text, comparable to when English homonyms are heard rather than seen spelled out. Despite the obvious difficulty of replicating this in translation, the English version of I’jaam is fairly successful, and the text mirrors the uncertainties of Iraqi life at that time. Fortunately, the wordplay is not relied on too much, so the novel is a relatively accessible read.

• Hassan Blasim’s (b. 1973) dark stories of contemporary Iraq are collected in The Corpse Exhibition (English 2014).

• Iqbal Al-Qazwini’s novel Zubaida’s Window (English 2008) is about an isolated exile’s experience of the American-led invasion of Iraq.

• Haifa Zangana’s (b. 1950) novel Women on a Journey (2001, English 2006) concerns women from different Iraqi backgrounds who have been exiled to London.

Betool Khedairi’s (b. 1965) novels also depict daily life in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s rule, but with the focus on the personal even when the political intrudes. The narrator in Khedairi’s autobiographical comingof-age novel, A Sky So Close (1999, English 2001), is caught between cultures, and the tension between her English mother and Iraqi father is only part of the pattern of difference and alienation that she repeatedly confronts. Despite its often being frustratingly impressionistic, A Sky So Close offers insight into Iraqi life in the 1970s and 1980s. Khedairi’s more interesting Absent (2004, English 2005) is the story of a young orphaned woman and her neighbors living in the sanction-suffering Baghdad of the 1990s. Khedairi captures the uncertainty of their lives, and the narrator’s detachment does not detract from the descriptions of the various characters and their straightforward dialogue.

SAUDI ARABIA AND OTHER GULF STATES

Abdelrahman Munif (1933–2004) studied and lived mainly in Iraq and Syria, but his fiction is most closely associated with Saudi Arabia and the transformation of the Gulf States that came with the rapid expansion of the oil industry after World War II. His five-volume Cities of Salt is set in a fictional Persian Gulf kingdom and is a thinly veiled history of twentieth-century Saudi Arabia. The novels still stand as the great saga of that region. The first three volumes of the series have been translated, as Cities of Salt (1984, English 1987), The Trench (1985, English 1993), and Variations on Night and Day (1989, English 1993). These books (and the others in the series) do not proceed in strict chronological order, and there is a slight disconnect between the more expansive first volume and the rest. The first two volumes, in particular, can stand on their own. As he already showed in Endings (1978, English 1988), Munif has both a deep understanding of and sympathy for traditional Bedouin life and a remarkable ability to convey this. Along with Ibrahim al-Koni, he is one of the great writers of desert fiction. Variations on Night and Day may contain too much local early-twentieth-century history and politics to be fully appreciated by Western readers, but both Cities of Salt and The Trench are accessible accounts of the transformation of the region and the resulting cultural and social turmoil. Munif describes the rapid shift away from traditional ways of life and the imposition of a largely new order, showing how the citizens of the newly oil-rich states have strained to adapt and how their rulers have often failed their subjects and the foreign powers pursuing their own agendas. Munif’s familiarity with every aspect of his subject—he was an expert on the oil industry and clearly very politically aware—give the novels a sure authority without being overly programmatic. Ranging from political intrigue to the domestic, along with detailed descriptions of the natural (and then unnatural) world, the novels offer a unique picture of the Arabian Peninsula in the twentieth century.

Munif’s Cities of Salt quintet was banned in Saudi Arabia, but its significance remains all the greater because essentially no locally written fiction appeared there until very recently. Yousef Al-Mohaimeed’s (b. 1964) Wolves of the Crescent Moon (2003, English 2007) is among the first novels to come out of Saudi Arabia, and in its depiction of three disaffected lives, each physically marked and scarred—one is missing an ear, another is missing an eye, and the third is a eunuch—is more of a universal than a local story, relying on few of the obvious associations that outsiders would make with Saudi Arabia, like religion or the oil-based economy. The characters are outsiders in unusual ways, most notably the one who is a freed slave and a eunuch. Al-Mohaimeed opens new vistas on Saudi society by blending local color with universal themes. Artfully constructed around its three protagonists and their life stories, Wolves of the Crescent Moon suggests promising new directions for fiction in the region. Al-Mohaimeed’s is a voice to look for in the future.

• The first two volumes of Saudi author Turki al-Hamad’s (b. 1953) trilogy about coming of age in Saudi Arabia in the late 1960s and early 1970s are Adama (1997, English 2003) and Shumaisi (1997, English 2004); the third volume has not been translated.

• Mohammad Abdul-Wali’s (1940–1973) tales of Yemen, They Die Strangers (English 2001), reflect his Ethiopian background..

• The anthology In a Fertile Desert (English 2009) is a collection of modern writing from the United Arab Emirates.

• United Arab Emirates author Muhammad al-Murr’s (b. 1955) regional collections are entitled Dubai Tales (English 1991) and The Wink of the Mona Lisa (English 1994).

• United Arab Emirates poet Thani Al-Suwaidi’s (b. 1966) wrote an elliptical novella of societal change and sexual identity called The Diesel (1994, English 2012).

A different new direction is also found in Rajaa Alsanea’s (b. 1981) Girls of Riyadh (2005, English 2007), touted as a Saudi Sex and the City. The story of four college-age women from relatively privileged families, Girls of Riyadh offers a glimpse of the hidden world of Saudi courtship and romance. Unfortunately, the underdeveloped male characters remain mystifying figures, and disappointingly, the narrator is obsessed with romance, despite the female protagonists’ educational and professional achievements. Girls of Riyadh is far from great fiction, but it has an undeniable novelty appeal.