article

Looks at what Arab writers did not write

Dr..

Kamal Abdul Malik

02 September 2022

Every Sunday, I sit in my comfortable chair in my apartment near Harvard University where I do research;

I sip a cup of filtered American coffee, peruse the literary supplement of the New York Times, and marvel at the astonishing range of fiction that is available to the American reader.

A wealth of books on a variety of subjects, novels and short stories ranging from the serious and the dark to the humorous and downright absurd: carnivorous frogs, arts and crafts in nineteenth-century Finland;

Tensions in a wealthy family are easily identifiable when the head of the family dies;

golfer's career and the celebration of his fame;

A vampire begins her plan for world peace by killing male humans;

The discovery of a galaxy that eliminates the concept of opposites between the near thing and the distant thing;

hostility between two generations of Chinese immigrants;

the adventures of Russian fugitives to the West;

Jews under the Spanish Inquisition;

Problems people face when following a particular diet;

The nice, poor women of the American South marry tenant farmers from Mexico.

All this in addition to the expected crop of love stories, detective and spy thrillers, wild beasts, giant insects, Harry Potter and science fiction novels.

In comparison to the topics dealt with by these American books, we find that there are topics that are absent in what is published in our Arab world, such as: (My Journey from Extreme Poverty to Richness);

(Detective novels looking for the killer), «How to..?»

They are guide books that give advice on how to design and make things yourself, for example: How to make a bookshelf?

(How to make a bookshelf) or “How to start a garden?”

(gardening for beginners);

So does "entertainment literature", such as Harlequin's romance novels and the writings of satirical journalist Art Buchwald.

The absence of these topics in Arabic writings deserves to be contemplated and scrutinized, as the absent topic may have a much stronger significance than its present counterpart.

We read American novels that present non-American characters and take place in foreign countries, such as The Good Earth novel by the American Pearl Buck, a novel set in China and its heroes are Chinese.

By comparison, we find that almost all modern Arabic literature, with a slight exception, revolves around the Arabs. There are, of course, countless works in which foreign characters or foreign capital appear, London, Paris, New York, and finally Chicago, one of the earliest and most famous of which is “A Bird from the East” ( 1938) by Tawfiq al-Hakim, which in fact revolves around his own experiences as a law student in Paris.

There is only one novel of quality that is not related to Arab characters or Arab life, and that is Taha Hussein's novel "Lost Love" (1942), a miserable love story that takes place in France, and concerns only French characters.

However, what draws attention is the absence of Arab novels and plays that deeply present non-Arab characters from foreign countries who have relations with modern Arabs that range from friendship and alliance to enmity and peace, such as the United States and Israel.

Visiting scholar at Harvard University 

To read the previous articles of the writer please click on its name.