Published every two weeks, Al Majalla’s Book Watch aims to provide an authentic snapshot of the dynamic publishing landscape in the Arab world. This week includes autobiography selections, how the world sees Palestine, the impact of translation, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, and even brothel visits.
House of Memories
By: Mahmoud Shuqair
Publisher: Dar Nofal – Hachette Antoine, Lebanon
The novel The Sleeping Beauties by the Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata tells the story of an elderly man who spends five nights lying beside a young, sleeping girl who ultimately dies. During this time, he reminisces about the women he has known.
It had such a profound impact on the renowned Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez that he wished he had written it himself. Deeply influenced, he drew inspiration from it for his celebrated novel Memories of My Melancholy Whores, in which an old man pays to spend a night with a young prostitute yet soon realises that he is deeply drawn to her and ultimately refrains from acting out his original intention.
The Palestinian writer Mahmoud Shuqair, in his novella House of Memories, draws inspiration from both these novels, his characters steeped in sorrow and the anguish of loss. The protagonist is Muhammad the Younger, an elderly man who loses his wife to COVID-19.
Struggling with grief and tormented by his enduring desire for young women despite his advanced age, he visits a brothel. There, he, too, lies beside a young girl who has been given a sleeping pill by the madam to keep her unconscious.
After a while, she reveals that she has not been asleep. They begin talking, and dialogue merges with the characters from other novels, momentarily dissolving the boundaries between reality and fiction, truth and illusion.
Since this novel is set in Jerusalem, the writer immerses the narrative in memories steeped in bitterness, tracing a journey from pre-colonial Palestine through the oppression, harassment, and military patrols that fracture the city, the arrests, the omnipresence of Israeli spies, and the countless transgressions against the Palestinian people, and Jerusalemites in particular.
The Shade and the Sun – Selections from Autobiographies – Second Collection
By: Fahd bin Abdullah bin Saleh Al-Jarwi
Publisher: Afaq Al-Ma’rifah – Saudi Arabia
The first collection of The Shade and the Sun was popular for its carefully curated selection of 150 renowned Arab and non-Arab autobiographies. Its success made the second collection a far greater challenge for the author since the most prominent autobiographies had already been featured.
To navigate this challenge, Al-Jarwi turned to lesser-known yet highly significant accounts. It features selections from 140 autobiographies, surpassing the first volume in size and offering a trove of rare insights and valuable reflections.
In this way, it is volume from the library of life, a sip from the well of memory, a footprint on the path of existence, a wellspring of both sorrow and joy, a journey from the melodic echo of childhood wonder.
The author, who notes how some autobiographies have had a profound impact on him, hopes that these collections will help ease sorrow and pain while inspiring gratitude, contentment, and joy. It does. It is rich and diverse.
Palestinian Reflections
By: Saïd Boukhlit
Publisher: Jabra Publishing & Distribution – Jordan
This book comprises what Moroccan writer Saïd Boukhlit describes as “personal reflections” on Palestine, the history of the Palestinian cause, the Zionist movement, and Israel, including figures such as Yasser Arafat, Régis Debray, Mahmoud Darwish, David Ben-Gurion, and Noam Chomsky, among others.
It interrogates global conscience and universal values in the face of the violence inflicted upon the Palestinian people, with the author describing it as “whispered thoughts, a purely personal confession, a dialogue with the self”—as opposed to a dry and distant academic study.
He considers it a collection of contemplative journal entries, monologues, and cathartic musings rather than a rigorous documentary work intended to serve as a historical academic reference, which should be left to specialists capable of conducting thorough research, documentation, analysis, and precise annotation.
At its core, the book looks at the moral framework of the contemporary world—one that, in the author’s view, has increasingly legitimised injustice and oppression while openly institutionalising contempt, hatred, and violence.
The author’s efforts to capture fragments of unfolding events and preserve them is a way of linguistically, intellectually, and emotionally tracing the imprints of a crime. This is quite unlike the flat, report-like language typically employed in media discourse.
Unashamedly pro-Palestinian, the author writes with deep emotional resonance about their ongoing suffering, so his personal, introspective narrative style is one that allows him to convey both a political and a personal stance. He says: “Discussing matters of this kind—especially the Palestinian cause—is, first and foremost, a test of what it means to be a human truly worthy of this identity.”
Cognitive Archipelagos in Translation
By: Dr. Abd Al-Nour Khurafi
Publisher: Khutut wa Zilal Publishing – Jordan
This book goes beyond merely emphasising the role of translation in enabling people to learn about one another; it also explores the profound impact of translation on achieving comprehensive and sustainable development.
As an example, the author highlights the unparalleled translation efforts initiated by Caliph Al-Ma’mun, which played a pivotal role in the construction and advancement of Islamic civilization. However, he laments how Arabs later squandered this vast intellectual legacy and urges them to take inspiration from Japan’s experience.
The book further argues that translation is no longer merely a means of cultural exchange between peoples; it has evolved into a form of civilisational struggle between a dominant civilisation whose initiatives reinforces its economic and ideological superiority and a weaker civilisation unable to shape its own course. Translation is not always an innocent or neutral act, says the author. Rather, it can be driven by a yearning for power and domination.
He sees epistemology as founded on two fundamental truths: one rational (rooted in logic) and the other material (rooted in sensory experience). Both, he argues, are intrinsically tied to language, which he regards as the key to reality, but it is the multiplicity of interpretations that grants language its capacity for evolution.
Translation, therefore, plays a crucial role in sustaining this dynamism by continually injecting language with new dimensions of meaning and understanding.
On the techniques of translation, the author underscores the importance of precision in transferring meaning from the source text to the translated text, saying translators must strive for accuracy—not only linguistically but also culturally—so the translated work remains faithful to the spirit and context of the original.
The book also covers concerns over translation (such as identity loss and self-erasure), the difference between machine translation and traditional human translation, the pitfalls of religious translation, and the broader implications of these challenges for cultural exchange between nations, all with a scholarly depth.
Habermas: From the Public Sphere to Post-Secular Societies (Essays – Dialogues – Readings)
Translated and Compiled by: Ali Al-Rawahi
Publisher: Ninawa Publishing – Syria
Translated and compiled by Omani scholar Ali Al-Rawahi, this book brings together a collection of essays by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who is 95 years of age.
It adds insight into the intellectual and historical context in which his ideas were formulated, as well as the philosophical and ethical transformations he associated with the public sphere, politics, and the media. The book also examines the broader societal changes that Habermas observed, particularly the rise of religious fundamentalism.
He defines secular societies, like those in Canada and Europe, as those that—due to their secularism—have excluded religion from public life, something he thinks has contributed to the rise and spread of religious fundamentalism. This has led him to argue that secular societies must transition to post-secular societies, where religion is reintegrated into public life, allowing for its practice and fostering religious pluralism.
The book includes interviews with Habermas and analysis of some of his key ideas and arguments. As compiler and translator Ali Al-Rawahi observed, some of Habermas’s debates extended deep into French philosophy, particularly with Jacques Derrida on subjects such as deconstruction and constructivist rationality.
“By the early 1980s... the confrontation between German and French thought had reached its peak, partly due to the extensive translation of German philosophical works into French, a process that began in the 1930s and 40s, bringing figures such as Nietzsche and Heidegger to prominence in French intellectual circles.”
