Soha Hesham , Wednesday 15 Jan 2020
Main
Mohamed Berrada, Rasael Min Emraa Mokhtafia
DeelFacebookTwitterWhatsAppTelegramLinkedIn
Mohamed Berrada, Rasael Min Emraa Mokhtafia (Letters from a Woman Who Disappeared), Almutawassit Books, 2019, pp158
After she disappears, we read the old letters of a woman journalist, Jazibia Abdel-Aziz, to her secret lover Himan Al-Sebti, a leftist economist and an avid reader of literature. The novel showcases these progressive letters, written in the 1950s and 1960s, showing to what extent Jazibia was ahead of her time and how liberating her ideas were. Her voice is distinctive mixing explicit emotions with a socio-political critique of Morocco. Himan had been fond of her bold style when he began to pursue her till they met. To him as to the reader, she embodies an attempt at personal emancipation parallel to the struggle for the independence of Morocco from French occupation in 1956. She was a married young woman in her twenties and he was very attracted to her and her attitude of independence and how she confronted patriarchal authority in Moroccan society. The novel boldly combines reality with fiction through this secret relationship between Jazibia and Himan during the confused social and political upheavals of the time of the Abdallah Ibrahim government and all the way through the uprising of 23 March 1965 and the large-scale crackdown that followed.
Born in Rabat in 1938, Mohammed Berrada is one of Morocco’s most influential literary figures. He is a critic and translator as well as novelist, and he headed Morocco’s Writers Union in 1976-1983. His books in include Loabat Al-Nisyan (The Game of Forgetting, 1986), Al-Daw Al-Harib (Fleeting Light, 1993), Like a Summer That Will Not Come Back (2001), a memoir of his time in Cairo, and Imraat Al-Nisyan (The Woman of Forgetting, 2001).
Alia Mamdouh, Al-Tanki, Almutawassit Books, 2019, pp270
1
Alia Mamdouh, Al-Tanki
This novel comes with a painting by the Syrian artist Khaled Al-Nasseri – the publisher – on its cover. Al-Tanki is Iraqi dialect for “water tank”, which in the book is a reference to both a container of feelings regarding the lost Iraq and an actual street, the gathering point for Iraqi intellectuals, that had a water tank and was therefore called Al-Tanki even though this wasn’t its real name. Iraqi novelist Alia Mamdouh adopts an unusual narrative technique, employing the famous Iraqi architect Maath Alousi’s concept of the cube. Alousi himself appears in the novel, and together with the female protagonist Afaf Ayoub sets out to design a cube to which they would invite those people they loved. And so the novel, told in numerous voices and from numerous viewpoints, manages to be a cinematic, theatrical, epistolary narrative all at the same time.
In the course of seven chapters, it traces the journey of Afaf and her family Al-Ayoub through various times and places in Iraq, between the lost dreams of the leftists of the 70s and the American invasion of 2003. Afaf left to Paris aiming for a new future after all the disturbances in her homeland but she was a prisoner of nostalgia, and with all her emotional turmoil she decides to approach a therapist, Karl Valino, with whom she stages a metaphorical trial of the west.
The Paris-based novelist was born in Iraq in 1944, she studied psychology in the University of Mustansiriya and was editing Al Rasid magazine when she moved to Lebanon, then Morocco before settling in the French capital. In 2004 she won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for her novel The Loved Ones. She is the author of the acclaimed Naphralene: A Novel of Baghdad. Al-Tanki is on the long list of the Arabic Booker.
Emad Abu-Ghazi, Mustafa Al-Nahhas: Mozakerat Al-Nafi (Mustafa Al-Nahhas: Memoirs of Exile), Al-Shorouk Publishing House, 2019, pp273
2
Emad Abu-Ghazi, Mustafa Al-Nahhas
This book was published to celebrate the centennial of the 1919 Revolution, a nationwide revolt against the British occupation following the exile of Egyptian leader Saad Zaghloul and members of the Wafd Party.
Professor of archival studies and former Culture Minister Emad Abu-Ghazi reveals some secrets behind Zaghloul’s exile in the Seychelles with a huge number of facts and information leading the reader to the forgotten role of Mustafa Al-Nahhas who was also exiled by the militants of the July Revolution for nearly 13 years, having been a key player on the Egyptian political scene. He was punished for his restless attempts to build a parliamentary democracy and because he was a respected and widely loved figure as evidenced by his funeral in 1965.
According to Abu-Ghazi in the introduction, he received those memoirs, which had been in the possession of Fouad Pasha Serageddin after the death of Al-Nahhas’s wife Zeinab Al-Wakil when they were found in the late statesman’s house, through Al-Wafd Party icon Fouad Badrawy. Unlike the Nahhas memoirs published by Ahmed Ezzeddine, which were written by Mohamed Kamel Al-Banna, these exist in Al-Nahhas’s hand.
The memoirs are divided into three sections, starting with a sentence “The era of violence and terrorism”, after which Al-Nahhas reveals the reasons behind his exile with Saad Zaghloul, referring to Zaghloul always as “the president” and often mentioning the conflict between Zaghloul and Adly Yakan.
Kamel Riahi, Al-Beretta Yaksab Daaiman (The Beretta Always Wins), Almutawassit Books, 2019, pp235
3
Kamel Riahi, Al-Beretta Yaksab Daaiman
Named after the famous semiautomatic pistol which was used in various assassinations in Tunisia, this is a novel about the 2011 Tunisian revolution and its ramifications. It is a bold and gripping story told in strong and daring language. The Beretta Always Wins traces the history of Ali Kulab, a police officer who investigates a crime that consumes him to the maximum. He is one of the officers detained after the revolution, accused of killing a young black man during the protests. And since then he has been on trial, treated in the most humiliating ways by his former colleagues, especially the younger ones, after the collapse of the corrupt system he used to support. In a very gloomy scene when he is shooting stray dogs in the middle of the street with his Beretta pistol, he decides to borrow his colleagues rifle – only to lose it. The Beretta finds its way to the hands of thieves, police officers, smugglers, media figures, writers and others – a cursed object, with all the killings and assassinations it was used for hanging over it. It finally finds its way to a young man who committed suicide.
Born in 1974, Kamel Riahi works as a cultural editor in the radio and has published two previous novels, The Scalpel and Gorilla, both of which were translated into English. A winner of the Tunisian Prix Littéraires COMAR D’OR, he also published two collections of short stories and was one of the 39 Arab writers under 40 years who were selected for the anthology Beirut39
Jabbour Douaihy, Malik Al-Hind (The King of India), Al-Saki Publishing House, 2019, pp190
4
Jabbour Douaihy, Malik Al-Hind
With a misleading title and a cover holding the painting for the Russian-French artist Marc Chagall, Jabbour Douaihy’s new novel is set around the mysterious circumstances in which the body of Zakaria Mubarak was found on the border of his village Tel Safra after his return from a long journey to Europe, America and Africa, carrying with him a painting by Marc Chagall, the Blue Violinist, a gift from his girlfriend in Paris. His cousins are suspected of killing him due to their knowledge of a treasure supposedly buried underneath the house built by their grandmother when she came back from America. The novel traces Zakaria’s murder through the reality of Lebanon that holds conflicts, fake hope of revolution and sectarian enmities in its modern history till now.
Jabbour Douaihy is a Lebanese writer born in Zghorta in 1949. He earned his PhD in comparative literature from the New Sorbonne University and currently teaches French literature at the Lebanese University in Beirut. His novel June Rain was on the short list of the 2008 Arabic Booker and Autumn Equinox was translated into English by Nay Hannawi and won the Arkansas Arabic Translation Award. His latest novel is Chased Away. Douaihy has also published short story collections and children’s books. The King of India is on the long list of the Arabic Booker.
https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/50/1205/359599/AlAhram-Weekly/Culture/Books.aspx