Ibrahim Al Sinan: A revolution is underway in Saudi publishing

Genre diversity

Al Sinan has straddled genres throughout his career. He is known for his novel 'An Barzakh Between a Sweet Heart' and 'Salty Mind', a short story collection 'Five Sinful Minutes', and the play 'Blood Auction'.

On his moves between genres, he says: "Broadly speaking, it is about the art of storytelling, and switching between them is an attempt to ascertain all the different elements from one gender to another, experiment, and understand technical differences and writing techniques."

"But the source of what I am more inclined to is in the short stories, since even the novel has a narrative structure in its narration, with each chapter almost expressing itself individually if it is isolated from the ongoing plot of the connected novel."

On his debut novel, published in 2007, he says: "The novel is the most significant and important test for anyone engaged in storytelling because of its difficulty and the large number of elements that need a precise and complex structure, as well as the commitment and devotion it requires."

"So I wanted to test myself and demonstrate, at least to myself, that I can master this literary genre. Also, the novel is more expressive than the stories and says what the story is unable to state. In that novel I needed to say a lot because it is a social realistic novel that takes place over a long period of time.'

On his play, which was staged and performed by many actors during a theatrical performance at the Janadriyah Festival, he says:

"What everyone does not expect is that my interest in theatre was acting, so when I wrote the play I got all the roles right played in my imagination accurately, and I was a little annoyed when the director set his vision and needed to alter and scale back the production.

"I watched the performance of the actors and tried to relate it to my imagined interpretation of the roles themselves, and the degree of my connection with his idea, which made my evaluation of the play narcissistic when it was shown for the first time."

He added: "But then I found that happens often, and that the play on paper is an imagined body, once the spirit of performance appears in it, it takes it to another life that the writer's imagination did not have the ability to reach."

Literary influence on journalism

Al Sinan's writings as a journalist influenced the rest of his work, he believes: "When a journalist is a writer, he can say a lot, as literature softens and beautifies many aspects of journalism that are often harsh and ugly and will either be rejected by the reader for its crudeness or the censor for its frankness."

"In journalism, I have been keen to express the fundamental concepts of literature, thought and society more than private and specific affairs, moving away from the language of excitement, and relying on the ability of literature and language to attract attention."

On his role as editorial head at Raff, he says: "The duties of the editorial head at the house are concerned with content, in terms of selecting, sorting, evaluating, refining and improving, and supervising the production lines of that content, including proofreading, editing and translating foreign books, until it reaches the final production stage in its final form as an audio, electronic and paper book." 

Al Sinan comes to Raff having held other posts in the industry. He was the director of publishing at Madarik, and then had the same job at the Ma'na platform.

Given his experience, we asked him about the complaint of many Arab authors about the limited of Arabic books. Is the problem related to poor marketing, poor content, or the Arab public's concerns about the difficult everyday life in some countries?

He replied: "The question requires a long answer, despite its simplicity, and I will try to make it short. First, all of these reasons are correct, but to be more specific, we must take them from a source other than the authors."

"The marketing weakness in the Arabic publishing sector is related to the industry's economic strength."

"In terms of finance, publishers, most of which are sole proprietorships or family businesses, cannot afford to market every book they publish."

"As for the weakness or strength of the content, it is up to the reader to decide whether it is weak or strong because modern reading trends are moving away from creative content in literary genres, towards informative, professional, scientific and cultural content in general."

"By and large, the book competes with modern audiovisual means of publishing, movies, series, YouTube channels and podcasts, which offer the recipient what the book cannot offer."

Philosophy and revolution

Al Sinan worked on the first issue of The New Philosopher magazine.

Of this experience he says: "Over the past decade interest in philosophy has grown, and the Ma'na platform has begun to engage with this interest through its electronic platforms, building a reader base, and providing them with a lot of material that is not considered specialised philosophy but rather general philosophy."

"They were topics that connect philosophy with everyday reality, hence the idea of the New Philosopher, which offers philosophical content that every reader can read, and find philosophy represented in the details of their daily life."

Read more: Saudi Arabia experiencing transformational development in the realm of philosophy

"This made the magazine widely known in its first issues, and was highlighted by other magazines, including "Philosophy Now". Ma'na Publishing has specialised in this genre and subject, which makes it unique in its books and publications, and all its publications are still published today."

Finally, Al Sinan says of the wider Saudi publishing and creative production movement: "Today we are witnessing a great revolution in the field of Saudi publishing in terms of the initiatives undertaken by the Literature, Publishing, and Translation Commission, which have paved the way for the exploration of new talents in various creative and intellectual domains, and even promoted the growing interests of readers and recipients."

"These initiatives supported, for example, philosophy and translation from and into the Arabic language, and provided associations, programmes and conferences which in turn produced new literary and intellectual output different from previous decades."

"We began to see products in children's literature, plays, young adult literature, picture books and science fiction."