The Arab world was the guest of honor at this year’s London Book Fair, an annual trade event for the global publishing community. As part of the event, the British Council and the London Book Fair hosted an Arab World Market Focus Program. More than 40 writers, commentators and industry professionals from the Arab World led discussions and debates as part of a program which revealed the strength and diversity of Arabic literature. A special effort was made by the British Council to ensure that new voices from the Arab World had the opportunity to promote their books to a global publishing audience alongside more established authors, with a view to increasing the quantity and quality of literary work translated from Arabic to English and vice versa.
For example, the session titled “The Latest Lingo: Young Writers Setting the Trend,” discussed the new phenomenon in North Africa and the Maghreb, in which slang and rap are being translated out of Arabic and into French and English. Young Saudi writer Raja Alsanea participated in the session “Trends in Contemporary Arabic Fiction.” But don’t imagine for a moment that big names were neglected. Egyptian Baha Taher, who won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in March, was honored at a special breakfast, and Hisham Matar, Monzer Masri and Mourid Barghouti were just a few of the other famous authors and poets who took part in the Arab World Market Focus Program.
“Our colleagues here in London who have been responsible for most of the organization of the event feel that it has been a great success. This year because the Arab World was the guest of honor, there was good representation from it,” said Anthony Calderbank, Deputy Director, Saudi Arabia, British Council. “There was a good delegation from Saudi Arabia and Yemen including publishers, authors and journalists. In the past there was a tendency to focus perhaps on just a couple of Arab nations — Egypt and Lebanon — which have long been centers of literary creativity and production. It is no longer justifiable to continue like that. The Gulf region and the peninsula in particular have begun to produce some fantastic literature. We’ve seen that those in our delegation have enjoyed the event here but it has been good for people at the Book Fair and for our colleagues in London to meet Saudi writers and to realize what a rich literary scene exists in Saudi Arabia.”
The London Book Fair is an industry event, and so the British Council seminars promoted Arab authors who, it was thought, would be of interest to British publishers. It was amusing to see Arab authors treated like celebrities in London, with audiences paying attention to their opinions, refusing to publicly challenge their comments and fans shyly proffering books to be signed. Outside of poets perhaps, the Arab World has a poor track record when it comes to recognizing, let alone supporting, local talent. But that is exactly what the British Council and London Book Fair hoped to accomplish; to convince British publishers to publish and distribute books that originate in the Arab world. For that to happen, there is one essential key — translation. Unfortunately there was little focus at the London Book Fair on translators, even though the role of the translator is critical in the process of bringing Arabic literature to the attention of a western audience. Only one translator got any major attention at the Book Fair and that was Denys Johnson-Davis who for decades has been bridging the Arabic and western worlds with his language skills.
“The translator and the process of translation from Arabic is particularly complex and not necessarily the same as translating from say French to English for example,” said Calderbank. “Translators in the fields of science and business are quite expensive but there are not a lot of translators bringing Arabic literature out of Arabic and into English. It’s not very well paid. Most of us who do it are either academics who can find time as part of their academic duties, or those who do it as more of a love and a hobby. It’s not something that is going to guarantee you a good income, so most of us translate in our spare time, which means that it takes longer to do. I have just finished translating quite a long novel of almost 300 pages and that took me ages — more than a year.” Calderbank added that often when a review of a novel is written, the fact that it’s a translation won’t even be mentioned — unless the novel isn’t well received and then the translator may be blamed for the title’s poor showing. “If more translators are to be encouraged, then their talents need to be rewarded adequately,” he concluded.
Encouragement seems to be a primary need throughout the entire Arab publishing industry, from writers to distributors. For example, “The Bibliographical Guide to Arab Children’s Books,” found that in a fifty year period, 1950-1999, only slightly more than 12,000 children’s books were published in all Arabic-speaking countries. That figure is far less than the number published in Britain alone in the same period. Young Arab publishers may relate to the need for more youth-oriented literature and they received a boost when, at the London Book Fair, a jury chaired by John Makinson, chairman of Penguin Group presented the International Young Publishing Entrepreneur (IYPE) of the Year Award to Yemeni Nashwan Al-Maghafi, the owner and managing director of Yemen Bookshop. The award comes under the International Young Creative Entrepreneur awards scheme devised by the British Council.
Al-Maghafi was one of nine finalists, including five from the Arab world, representing small to medium-sized publishing firms. As part of the IYPE program, the finalists had been sponsored in the UK for two weeks during which they interacted with the British publishing community and gave presentations on their own publishing efforts. In actuality, all the Arab finalists were winners because the Al-Maktoum Foundation announced that it would be awarding contracts to all the Arab IYPE finalists to bind at least ten new titles.
Recently, a few Arab authors have found fame, if not fortune in the west. Winning the Nobel Prize can help an Arab author gain international recognition. Writing a sensational story can also grab attention. When Raja Al-Sanea’s “Girls of Riyadh” was first published in 2005, the book was immediately banned in the Kingdom. Translated into English, eventually the title began appearing in local bookstores. While there was enormous interest in the novel in the first years after its publication, every Arab author that was asked about it at the London Book Fair — particularly poets, spoke about it with disdain calling it “chick lit.” Newer titles recently written about Saudi Arabia and being promoted at the London Book Fair are far from the chick lit genre and won’t be appearing in Saudi bookstores anytime soon.
Where “Girls of Riyadh” was simply sensational, the new titles are better described as salacious. Already available in English is “The Others” published under the pseudonym of Siba Al-Harez, a 26 year old Saudi woman from Al-Qatif in the Eastern Province. At the Book Fair the novel was portrayed by its publisher as “a truly explosive portrayal of life for a young lesbian in Saudi Arabia.” Searching for a publisher outside the Arab World at the Book Fair was “Woman of Same,” by Samar El-Moqren, a Saudi journalist. Her novel claims to be fiction based on fact. In the story told by El-Moqren, the unmarried Sara and Raif are arrested while eating in a restaurant. While in prison Sara hears the personal accounts of the other women incarcerated with her. A second title already published in Arabic, but hoping to appear soon in other languages as well is “The Return,” by a Saudi woman writing under the pen name Warda Abdulmalek. Even in Arabic the novel has been banned across the Middle East. The novel claims to tackle issues in Saudi society including state, religious and familial abuse of women.
It certainly can be disconcerting to see negative accounts written in Arabic about Saudi Arabia and then published in other languages. In actuality though, fictional tales of life in the Gulf are already out there and these can’t even claim to be based on fact. Take the romantic novel “Promised to the Sheikh,” which was on display at the London Book Fair as part of the publisher Mills & Boon’s 100th birthday collection. In this nasty little tale, the sheikh of a fictional country “Quador,” rapes the woman who has been his betrothed since childhood. Unfortunately, readers who have no knowledge of the Middle East, except for the distorted images they are fed through western news programs, would probably think that the demented culture and events portrayed in “Promised to the Sheikh” were real somewhere.
In a post 9/11 world such cultural distortion can be the basis for hatred leading to violence. The time is long overdue for such ignorance to be quashed through the power of the Arab pen. The London Book Fair showed that urgent action is needed to provide a broader view of the people and values of the Arab World.