Abdellah Taïa, one of the 39 featured writers[/caption]Beirut 39: New Writing from the Arab World is an anthology of writing by young Arabs under the age of 40. The collection is a result of a competition run by the Hay Festival, with only 39 writers selected from several hundred.
Writers were selected for inclusion in the book by a panel of Arab writers, intellectuals, and journalists, and were nominated by publishers, critics, and readers of Arab literature.
What results is an unusual book that provides the English-speaking reader with a varied collection of poetry, short stories, and extracts from novels that give a window to Arab literature.[caption id="attachment_55233814" align="alignright" width="195"]
Beirut 39: New Writing from the Arab World[/caption]
Given that so much writing in Arabic goes untranslated, this is a unique work which provides a valuable service in opening non-Arabic speakers and readers to the diversity of new writing by Arabs. (Most of the writing is in translation from Arabic, although some of it was originally written in English.)
The talent of all the writers is evident, with many selections that clearly demonstrate mature writing of depth and skill, the quality of selections and their accessibility to the reader varies widely. Sadly, the selection is rather eclectic and covers so many writers and so much thematic and geographic ground that its strength is also its weakness—in that it lacks coherence, with little effort to organize the writing in relation to common themes, styles, literary forms, or geographic background. The extracts from novels are often so short as to leave the reader confused or simply unable to appreciate the large narrative arc of a novel— an extract from a novel can lack the tight focus of a short story.
Readers will find that this anthology is a good source text for selected readings֫—ideal for courses on Arab literature and for those who wish to sample short pieces of writing that can serve as an entry-point to expanded reading of the works of the authors selected here. A useful section at the end of the book provides short biographies of the writers and names some of their works.
Some of the writing is daring in the themes it broaches. including taboo subjects such as sex and sexuality. These passages are rendered with care and sensitivity, conveying intimacy, loneliness, and individual exploration in social environments that are often stifling and repressive, but in which individuals strike out to find some form of freedom, however constrained and unsatisfying. Some of the writing is also opaque and distant, never quite palpably setting the scene of a story or illustrating the personality of a character with enough complexity to invite the reader’s sustained interest. The short stories are exceptionally short due to the space constraints imposed on a book covering 39 writers in less than 300 pages, some of the stories sound quite abrupt and are not able to take off and fully develop, or simply could benefit from expansion.
Despite being an uneven work, readers will find short stories and poems of eloquence and power, and one hopes that Beirut 39 is only the beginning of expanding efforts to translate Arab writing and incorporate it fully into global literature and to the literary works available in Europe and North America.
There are a number of particularly engaging and poignant pieces. Ahmad Saadawi’s “Frankenstein in Baghdad” depicts the terrors of war, its violence and the way it distorts the psyche both ethically and emotionally. It is a harsh, honest, revelatory work.
Yassin Adnan’s “Small Talk in Shades of White” offers a sharp, witty, revealing account of a woman’s reflections on men, lovers, male chauvinism, and the insecurities, passions, and frailties of human lust, but also the capacity for dignity and self control. It is a concise, assured, and vigorous piece of writing with a believable and engaging narrative voice.
“The Wounded Man” by Abdella Taiah deals with forbidden love between men and the repression, fear, and self-alienation that results from social intolerance and repression. It captures emotions of tenderness, doubt, longing, fear, sadness, and a piercing desire to be free with eloquence and insight. It is a brave work for tackling a deeply taboo topic.
Abdullah Thabit’s “The Twentieth Terrorist” offers an original account of fundamentalism and the violence it inspires. The writing challenges assumptions about who is drawn to terrorism and that depicts the way in which religious totalitarianism and dogmatism can damage individuals and distort their moral and emotional lives, leaving devastating consequences for the individual and society alike.
Two of the selections deal with mental illness in a convincing way, drawing the reader into the mind of someone tortured by a complex mixture of pain, fear, loss of touch with reality, loneliness, doubt, confusion, paranoia, and terror. They are Hussein Al-Abri’s “The Last Hanging Poem” and Mansoura Ez Eldin’s “The Path to Madness.” This too is a taboo topic, and although the stories do not necessarily inspire empathy or compassion they honestly and carefully explore the subjective experience of mental illness—a subject which is taboo not only in the Arab world but in the West and many other parts of the globe as well.
Mohammad Hassan Alwan’s “Haneef from Glasgow” is a unique story, tender and direct in its humanism, uncomplicated and made all the more resonant by its simplicity and the love at its core. It depicts an unexpected, quiet emotional intimacy between a humble driver and the child—now adult—who recalls the central role his driver played during in his childhood in Saudi Arabia and in happy and peaceful memories of that time.
Among the poets, Bassim Al-Ansar’s poems are particularly strong, especially “A Life Surrounded by Trees.” Joumana Haddad’s “The Geology of the I” is a poem that is a world unto itself, a comprehensive, far-reaching exploration of the self that flies and walks and looks and exclaims and blinks and sighs and exclaims and opens and closes and circles itself in openness, in vulnerability, in beauty, in ugliness, in pain, defiance, sadness, and truth. It is a striking, bold, immersive work that explores the linkages between individual and world, infinite possibility and finite reality, expectation and result:
Any reader with an interest in Arab literature will be able to find something of interest in this volume. For all readers it provides a diverse sample of Arab writing and its styles, themes, distinctiveness and universal character alike.
