What are the greatest works of Arabic literature? The answer coming from an international panel may surprise many. The panel has named two novels. One is “Children of Gebelaawi” by well-known Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz and the other is Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s “Season of Migration to the North.”
The panel, which consisted of 100 writers and poets from 54 countries, was organized by the Norwegian Book Club as part of its plan to define an “ideal collection” of literary works from all over the world. More than 80 members of the panel came from various Western countries while 15 came from the Muslim world, including one from Saudi Arabia.
According to the organizers, the book that received most votes was “Don Quixote,” the picaresque extravaganza by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes that is often regarded as the first modern novel.
While the great classics of Arab literature failed to enter the list, Persian literature won three places with classics. These are the 33,000-line “Mathnawi” by Jalaleddin Mowlawi, also known as Rumi, “The Orchard” (Boustan) by Mushrefeddin Saadi and the “The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights” based on the ancient Indo-Iranian “Hezar Dastan.” Apart from Persian and Arabic none of the other languages of the Muslim world are represented in the list.
The lion’s share with 25 writers goes to literature written in English. England alone is ahead of all, with 12 writers while the United States follows with eight. Next comes French with 10 writers. Spanish and Italian get six writers each while Russian and German follow each with five. Three places go to Greek and another three to Portuguese. China and India are present with a single writer each while Japan does slightly better with two.
Some smaller nations have done remarkably well. Ireland is represented with four writers, all of them writing in English of course. Iceland, whose language is spoken by just 250,000 people, secures two places, double what goes to Brazil with almost 200 million inhabitants. Norway, with four million people, also gets two while India with 1.2 billion people has just one — and even then that one is part of classical Sanskrit mythology.
The Assyrian epic “Gilgamesh” is included as the representative of Mesopotamia, which was never the name of an actual country. Franz Kafka, a Czech Jew, is presented as someone from Bohemia, another country that no longer exists.
It is interesting that all the Scandinavian nations are represented in the list, some with two writers, while Finland, Nordic but not Scandinavian, is left out.
The panel seems to have a very eclectic taste. Its choice ranges from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales to classics such as Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey.” Some of the books chosen leave one perplexed. Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” was fashionable, especially among adolescents at a certain time but can hardly be regarded as high literature. Including Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”, on the other hand, may well have been designed to embarrass Iran rather than honor a work of literature.
The list reflects the fact that even the greatest literature cannot achieve universal recognition without the backing of powerful states. If English literature enjoys so dominant a position in our times it is at least partly due to the power that the British Empire, followed by the United States, enjoyed for more than two centuries. This is why a cute little novel like “Wuthering Heights” by Charlotte Bronte is included while such great Persian poets as Nasser Khosrow, Nezami and Hafiz do not make the list.
As far as Arabic literature is concerned it is clear that the panel is ignorant of the great poets. Nor are they likely to have heard of Neffari’s prose that represents one of the summits of achievement in any literature.
While most of the authors included in the list could be accepted as some of the greatest of all times, the works are not necessarily their best. Take Balzac, for example. The panel chose “Pere Goriot” which is certainly a great novel. But is it Balzac’s best? I think not. “The Chouans,” one of the greatest historic novels ever, or “The Shrinking Hide,” an astonishingly modern piece of fiction, might have been better choices. William Faulkner is present with “Absalom Absalom” and “The Sound and the Fury.” But what about “As I Lay Dying” and “Light in August”? Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” “Anna Karenina” and “The Death of Ivan Illych” are included but not his “Haji Murad,” one of the greatest pieces of fiction in any language.
Some books may well have been included on the basis of political correctness and in a bid to give the list as much diversity as possible. One example is “Zorba the Greek” by Nikos Kazantzakis which, although amusing to read during a holiday, can hardly be described as great literature. Anything by Xenophon would have been a better representative of Greek literature. The inclusion of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” is equally surprising. But then the list needed at least one black American woman writer.
I had long forgotten Paul Celine, the Romanian poet who wrote in French. After the list was published I dug his book out and re-read some of it. Don’t tell anybody but I still prefer Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard and Jacques Prevert who are not on the list!
Even within Western literature a number of “great absents” could be recognized. Believe it or not, there is no mention of Anton Chekov. Ernest Hemingway is included but not John Dos Passos. George Orwell is present with his much overrated “1984” but G.K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday” is not mentioned. Doris Lessing, herself a member of the panel, is present with her totally unreadable “The Golden Notebook” along with other unreadables, at least to me, like James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Samuel Becket’s trilogy. Instead such gems of English literature as Sir Thomas Browne’s “Urn Burial” and “The Garden of Cyrus” are not mentioned.
The list may help introduce some unjustly ignored gems to wider publics. Italo Svevo’s “Confessions of Zeno” is one of the most delightful literary reads while Fernando Pessoa’s “The Book of Disquiet” is a must. Lovers of poetry will do well to spend as much time as they can with Giacomo Leopardi whose collective poems are included in the list. Francois Rabelais’s “Gargantua and Pantagruel,” Giovanni Boccaccio’s “Decameron” and Denis Diderot’s “Jacques the Fatalist and His Master” are among key literary texts that need to be read throughout our part of the world.
The list offers works in just 18 languages. Considering the fact that there are more than 5,000 living languages in the world even today, one must assume that written literature is not a universal human endeavor. Within the next two decades more than half of the living languages of today will cease to exist. Those that will continue to live are precisely the ones that have discovered the magic of written literature. This is why writing is essential for the cultural survival of all human communities.
