Contemporary Arabic fiction

Abstract

When in the late 1920s Krackovskij and Gibb drew the first outlines of an assessment of modern Arabic literature, the place occupied by fiction was quantitively and even more so qualitatively quite modest: there was the historical novel from Jamil Mudawwar to Zaidan, Hadith 'Isa ibn Hisham of al-Muwailihi, Muhammad Taimur's tentative efforts hardly taken up then by his brother Mahmud Taimur. Today, a few decades after these beginnings, anyone who wants to be acquainted with the fictional output of the Arabs, can survey a vast and varied panorama, a veritable embarras de richesse; many authors have made a name for themselves, tendencies and characters have followed and been superimposed on each other, sound artistic values have been achieved. The West still knows little of this literary crop, because of the difficulty of the language, the scarcity of translations (we must single out with due praise and respect the work of the periodical Orient in spreading knowledge of this literature), and the intermittent and irregular manner in which the texts of this contemporary work in Arabic become known to the European specialists. The first volume of an anthology, Anthologie de la Litterature Arabe Contemporaine, edited by Raoul and Laura Makarius and published by Editions du Seuil, devoted exclusively to the novel and the short story (two other volumes dealing with poetry and the essay are announced), offers an excellent guide which, in certains parts, will, for many, be a revelation. Prefaced with a stimulating even if at times cryptic introduction by Jacques Berque, this anthology offers short bibliographical notes and passages in translation of no less than sixty Arab novelists from Iraq to Morocco. The first part is devoted to the 'Founders' of the novel in Lebanon