By Maria Karkour

Image credit: Creative Commons/benuski
To broaden your horizons through reading, here are some book titles recommended by one expert AUP faculty member.
Known Palestinian scholar Edward Said writes in his book Orientalism, “The Orient and Islam have a kind of external, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the Orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the [Western] Orientalist’s work.”

For Said, there is a binary dynamic between the “us” vs. “them”, where the West is the “us” and the East, the Orient, is the “them”. The unbalanced dynamic Said is mentioning occurs when the West marks a hegemonic stamp on the understanding of the East. They have forged a narrative about the Orient that has always been derogative in comparison to the narrative they create about themselves. And so, a Western scholar’s forged outspoken knowledge about the world has more legitimacy than what the internal people of the regions of the East have to say about themselves.

It is Professor David Tresilian who will introduce 11 Arabic translated book titles he recommends. The professor is part of the Comparative Literature and English department at the American University of Paris and has also taught at the American University of Cairo. He offers courses in relation to the contemporary and modern Arab world, Arabic literature, as well as writing and criticism. He himself has written a book titled Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature. He is also involved in Al Ahram, a famous newspaper and news platform in the Arab region, especially in Egypt from where it is issued.

This series of books will help you understand the first-hand storytelling of the so-called Orient from the inside perspective of Middle Eastern writers. These books are sadly not so renowned on an international scale, but they might push you into wanting to reach out for them on a bookshelf, a place where they should not have a reduced status.

Here is what Professor Tresilian tells us about these works in his own words.

https://peacockplume.fr/arts-culture/11-arabic-book-recommendations