Middle Eastern Literature - Classic & Contemporary

What have you read and can recommend of Middle Eastern literature, either classic or contemporary? Please tell us something about the book or author, or why you recommend it, rather than just listing books...

#1 Reading Lolita in Tehran by azar nafizi is about an English teacher who had a clandestine class of young women reading Lolita which would have been impossible in the University due to the Islamic fundamentalist regime. Ms. Nafisi is now in the US and has been appearing around the country as her book was a best seller.
Another best seller was The Kite Runner by khaled Hosseini about a boy in Afghanistan. If you are interested in Israeli authors, I would recommend Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and Aharon Applefeld.

Hosseini's new novel A Thousand Splendid Suns is due out in May here in the states. It has already garnered some great reviews.

I love the poetry of Rumi, a sufic poet from the 13th century...there is a spirituality and love of life there thats really difficult to explain in words, but I recommend him to absolutely everyone! Two of my favorites are:

"This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle's eye a turning night of stars"

and

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

I have The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks, and I find it to be a wonderful collection, with a bit from all his different kinds of poems.

This is actually non-fiction, but I really love Edward Said. He forces you to confront society's hidden beliefs about Islam and writes very poignantly about what it's like to grow up in a war-torn place. I really enjoyed his memoir Out of Place, the story of his childhood in Palestine and Egypt. It's a good mix of family lore and the history of the region.

This year I read In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (Libya/UK). It was very good, but understated. I like that but if you prefer loads of action then it's not for you.

Almost anything by Naguib Mahfouz ... he was an Egyptian writer (and Nobel prize winner) who wrote novels about people dealing with traditional vs. modern ways of life ... his Cairo Trilogy is prbably his most popular stuff.

Also, if you ever come across anything "by" Mohammed Mrabet, grab it ... Mrabet isn't actually a novelist, he told his stories to Paul Bowles, who then did the actual writing down ... yet these books really seem (IMHO) authentic ... very non-Western.

Of course, Bowles' own work is fantastic, too.

Farnoosh Moshiri's At the Wall of the Almighty is a powerful novel about imprisonment, torture, and imaginative escapism/self-construction during the Iranian Revolution. I also love Persepolis, Fadia Faqir's Pillars of Salt (a subversive and smart transformation of the Thousand and One Nights, and all of Hanan al Shaykh's novels.

I just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns, I might even say I liked it more than The Kite Runner. It was amazing and look forward to anything else that Khaled Hosseini decides to write.

The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist by Emil Habiby is definitely worth reading. Very black humour. I also second the recommendation for Naguib Mahfouz. I have his Cairo Trilogy in Arabic, and hope one day to get my Arabic good enough to read it.

Also good is Arabic Short Stories, edited by Denys Johnson-Davies. And I own Modern Arabic Fiction: An Anthology, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, but I've been a little put off by its size - it's a bloody enormous book.

Anyone interested in Mediaeval Arabic literature should also try Robert Irwin's The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature. Entertaining and very informative.

I recently discovered a bookshop that deals exclusively in Arabic books (in both Arabic and English). It is near Paddington station in London, but has a US internet shop, I think, and has a lot of very nice looking stuff. Its called al-Saqi books:
http://www.alsaqibookshop.com/
The majority of writers they stock are Egyptian, Saudi and Lebanese, but there are also writers that cover a lot of the Middle East and North Africa. Most is non-fiction, but their fiction catalogue is pretty good.

Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif

I don't know if it's been posted elsewhere, but the shortlist for the IPAF (International Prize for Arab Fiction) was announced recently. The titles in English are below, although it's still unclear to me whether any are actually available in English yet...

June Rain by Jabbour Douaihy (Lebanon)
The Land of Purgatory by Elias Farkouh (Jordan)
In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa (Syria)
Walking in the Dust by May Menassa (Lebanon)
Swan Song by Mekkaoui Said (Egypt)
Sunsat Oasis by Baha Taher (Egypt)

The winner will be announced on March 10th.

Amin Maalouf is a Lebanese writer who's worth looking up. I enjoyed his Samarkand and a friend loved The Rock of Tanios.

We had a group read on The Yacoubian Building, a novel set in Cairo, Egypt. The group read was done at: http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=22552#325106

#13
Maybe, if the titles in your list are not available, are ones from the previous 3-4 years around in English?

There's a collection I looked at called Stories by Iranian women since the revolution / translation from the Persian by Soraya Paknazar Sullivan ; introduction by Farzaneh Milani ; foreword by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. It also gives a brief history of women writers in Persia/Iran.

Of course, many of these authors are hard to find in the states, you'd probably have to go online to purchase.

If I remember correctly, it also contains an interesting discussion of the difficulties publishing in the US.

markon

publisher: Austin, Tex. : Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, c1991.

ISBN 0292776497

#15 Apologies, vpfluke, I haven't looked in here for a while...

This is the inaugural International Prize for Arab Fiction, so it looks as if we'll just have to wait for the translations, should they ever appear...

Definitely I'jaam by Sinan Antoon. Wow, what an amazing book! I had the honor of reviewing it for my blog, and I was utterly blown away. It's only about 96 pages, and that's probably what makes it such an intense read. It's a fictional writing by a man in an Iraqi prison, as he contemplates his life. Definitely well worth the read.

Stolen Lives was quite engrossing, non-fiction, and terrifying. It is a story of a family of women and their years spent in jail and the ways in which they comforted and loved one another.

I have read The Cairo Trilogy and enjoyed each of the books. Mahfouz has a way of writing which draws the reader in and his characters become part of your heart.

If you don't mind reading a book that's pro-Israeli military, then Beaufort by Ron Leshem is a worthwhile read. It's the story of a platoon of Israeli soldiers stationed at a stronghold in southern Lebanon at a time that the peace movement was taking hold in Israel along with calls for military disengagement. The story is told through the eyes of the platoon leader.

The book itself was the basis of the film (also called "Beaufort) which had been nominated for an (American) Academy Award this past year (in the category of Best Foreign Film). The fiilm's screenplay had been co-written by Israeli film director Joesph Cedar and the book's author Ron Leshem. I've yet to see the film.

I posted this in another group, but readers here might be interested also:

it is worthwhile noting that there are three books on this year's Orange Prize longlist with Middle Eastern connections.

The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer is set in Iran

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak is set in Turkey

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani is set in 17th century Persia.

I recommend The Attack by Yasmina Khadra (a nom de plume) about an assimilated Israeli arab, non-believer, successful surgeon, former Bedouin whose wife becomes a suicide bomber without ever letting on to him that she was anything but happy.

The hero's perfect happy life is shattered in a moment and it never recovers.

It is an amazing book, and shows the deep bitterness of the Palestinians at the loss of their country and their independence, and the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve the conflicts and prevent the injustices and the violence.
I posted this in another group, but readers here might be interested also.

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. One of the strangest - and hypnotic - books I've ever read.

Interesting article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/is-the-arab-world...