frankfurt book fair 2008

We will be attending the Frankfurt book fair this year!
From wednesday October 15th through friday October 17th.

See you there!

Khaled Khalifa in the New York Times

A Bloody Era of Syria’s History Informs a Writer’s Banned Novel ,
Damascus, April 12, 2008

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

"Banning books is normal for us here, it's funny, even a little absurd. It's not like Europe — 'Ooh, I've been censored'"

PEOPLE still talk about what happened here in the 1980s as “the Events,” as if they were too awful to describe. The Syrian military’s bloody struggle with militant Islamists left at least 10,000 dead in the city of Hama, and produced a trauma the authorities do not like to hear discussed.

So when Khaled Khalifa decided to write about it in his latest novel, “In Praise of Hatred,” he knew he was touching a taboo subject. The book, a Balzacian tale full of romance and murder that ranges from Afghanistan to Yemen to Syria, was promptly banned when it was first published here in 2006.

Last month, the novel, republished in Beirut in 2007, became a finalist for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, a new award modeled on Britain’s Man Booker Prize. It is now being translated into English and other languages.

All that has given Mr. Khalifa, who is better known here for his television screenplays, a new prominence as one of the rising stars of Arab fiction, and a rare public voice on a largely forbidden topic.

“If I had won the Booker, the regime would have had a huge problem,” he said with a barrel-chested laugh. “I think the culture minister breathed a big sigh when I lost.” (The top prize went to an Egyptian novelist, Bahaa Taher, the éminence grise of Arab letters.)

A bearish man with a boiling corona of steel-gray hair, Mr. Khalifa, 44, has a clownish humor that undercuts his large literary ambitions. He smoked, drank and plowed through a table full of appetizers during a late-night interview at Ninar, a Damascus restaurant popular with Syrian artists and intellectuals, his long answers interrupted by bursts of raucous laughter.

THE novel, he said, took him 13 years to write, and draws on his early years growing up in Aleppo. There he watched the conflict between the Islamists and the security forces of Syria’s secular Baath Party become steadily more violent, with what he calls a “culture of elimination” developing on both sides.

“The main thing I wanted to get at was the struggle of two fundamentalisms,” he said. “I remember that heaviness, that feeling of death dominating the whole city. You were always surrounded by armed men who agreed on only one thing: If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

Although the novel is centered on a single Aleppo family, it encompasses the broader global story of political Islam over the past three decades. Some real people make appearances, including Abdullah Azzam, a leader of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and a mentor of Osama bin Laden.

But Mr. Khalifa insists he has no interest in social realism or didactic fiction. Political ideology infected the work of too many Arab writers in the 1960s and ’70s, he said. His own aims are purely aesthetic, and his heroes are William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez. He chose to write about “the Events” not to make a political point, but to give artistic life to the increasingly brutal realities of the world he grew up in.

“In Praise of Hatred” is narrated by a young woman, and its title comes from an observation she makes about the way hatred filters from the violent streets outside into her own quiet life: “Hatred possessed me. I was excited by it, I felt it was saving me; it gave me a sense of superiority I had been seeking for a long time.”

Mr. Khalifa said he knew the book was crossing what are universally called “red lines” in the Arab world, and he was frightened when it came time to publish.

Not for the first time, he added. His second novel, “The Gypsy Notebooks,” includes material about Syria’s Baath Party. It was banned for four years, not by the government, but by the Union of Arab Writers, which “tries to be more royal than the king,” he said, with a disparaging chuckle.

The subject of censorship provokes an irreverent outburst from Mr. Khalifa.

“Banning books is normal for us here, it’s funny, even a little absurd,” he said with an impish smile. “It’s not like Europe — ‘Ooh, I’ve been censored!’ ” He fluttered his hands in mock anxiety. A book is not better just because it has been banned, he said. And Western talk of censorship seems to strike him as a little moralistic.

“Here, we know people in the censorship office,” he went on, laughing, in phrases studded with profanity. “So you might call them: ‘Why the hell did you censor my book?’ And he’ll respond, ‘Why the hell did you have to write about this?’ ”

In fact, Mr. Khalifa hints that he has made some compromises. (“We don’t want to live outside Syria, and we know how to avoid this.”) The Alawites, for instance, the religious minority to which the ruling Assad family belongs, are described in his latest novel as the “mountain people,” and a military leader who resembles the feared brother of former President Hafez a-Assad is left unnamed.

The book also scarcely mentions Hama, the city where the deadliest battle between the Syrian military and the Islamists took place, in 1982. Instead, it is set largely in Aleppo, which had its own share of violence during those years.

“For me, Aleppo was the main struggle, because the violence there happened over a long period of time, not overnight, like in Hama,” he said.

Literary celebrity is new to Mr. Khalifa. He spent much of his 20s living in his middle-class family’s home in Aleppo, a miserable time during which he wrote fiction from midnight to 6 a.m., when the house was quiet. His mother gave him the equivalent of a few dollars for cigarettes and coffee every day. His first novel, “The Guard of Deception,” was not published until 1993, when he was almost 30.

Four years later his first television screenplay was broadcast, and he moved to Damascus and got an apartment of his own. He started doing television work as a way to make money (“I needed a way to pay for alcohol”), but he is now one of the writers who have helped Syrian TV serials rival Egyptian shows in their popularity across the Arab world.

HE tries to focus on fiction now, writing all afternoon at home or at the Journalists’ Club, a local hangout. He is a well-known figure in the Damascus art scene; he got up several times during the interview to greet fellow writers or actors with hugs and kisses on the cheek as they arrived at Ninar. His cellphone buzzed, and once — recognizing the number — he answered it in Arabic with a familiar “What’s up, jerk?”

He is not married (“I have been lucky,” he said) and when he commented on the beauty of a woman passing the table, a translator tut-tutted him, drawing a big Falstaffian grin in response.

But the frivolity dropped when Mr. Khalifa returned to the subject of his novel.

“Syria has a long history as a cosmopolitan and commercial place; its traditions are tolerant and diverse,” he said. “This is what prevented the victory of the Islamists in the 1980s.”

The violence of that period eroded those traditions, he said, tincturing the whole society with intolerance and brutality. “We haven’t had a setback like this in 1,000 years,” he added. And though the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that led the armed rebellion in the 80s, is banned, Islamic fundamentalism “has grown and penetrated our society, especially among the young.”

“All this has harmed Syrian society so much,” he said sadly. “If what happened in the 1980s were to happen again, I think the Islamists would win.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/world/middleeast/12khalifa.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&ref=world

interview with Jabbour Douaihy

NOW Lebanon: Your novel, June Rain, has received much praise. The work tackles one of the trickier aspects of the development of civil conflict in Lebanon: the 1957 rivalry in Zghorta between the Douaihy family and the Franjiehs and Mouawads which led to the Meziara church killing. Why did you choose to address these topics, specifically?

Jabbour Douaihy: As a matter of fact it was [the late journalist] Samir Kassir who gave me the idea of writing a literary novel about the background of the massacre of Meziara, which took place in our area in 1957. And that is precisely why I dedicated the novel to him, knowing that the murderers didn’t allow him to read more than two chapters of this novel; he had asked me to send him every chapter I finished writing. The idea as it crystallized in our discussions is that the Zawiya area in Zghorta underwent a period of civil violence that could easily be considered as a rehearsal for the civil war that stormed Lebanon in 1975. I lived these events at an early age, and I experienced the trauma that you can’t erase, as did a whole generation. All the details are hearsay, as two parties would tell a tale in a completely contradictory fashion and justify it as defense, no more.

The image that each family created of the other, cleansing so that whole families were displaced, the establishment of a real front line and barricades dividing the town, and, last but not least, a fragile reconciliation against the backdrop of the Lebanese political struggle – behind which is an Arab struggle … everything was there. All I had to do was find the plot and create the characters, identify the narrators, and there are plenty. My concern was not to tell the story of domestic violence, but rather the way different social stereotypes interacted with this violence, its effects, and living with it. So it was a narrative for the people, and not a narrative of current affairs.

NOW Lebanon: Themes of the Lebanese civil war often emerge in contemporary Lebanese literature. How do you view this trend?

Douaihy: Where to escape? Just as everybody expects a Palestinian writer not to handle any other subject but his relationship with his homeland, with impossibilities and agony, it is expected of a Lebanese writer to revolve around the themes of the everyday happenings of civil conflict. Still, a lot of novelists try to avoid writing directly about the war, but no one can escape the presence of the civil struggle in the background. The struggle, being on the verge of falling into an abyss, and trying every morning to look out for the possibility to fix some destruction of our public concerns – it became a lifestyle. So this instability haunts our writings in spite of us.

NOW Lebanon: One of the aims of the Arab Booker Prize is to carry the influence of Arabic literature to the rest of the world, particularly the West. How important do you think this aim is?

Douaihy: In addition to it expressing the cultural characteristics of the United Arab Emirates and specifically Abu Dhabi through the abundance of its cultural activities and institutions, the international award for the Arab novel, or what has come to be known as the Arab Booker Prize, is an important event on the level of literary life in the Arab world.

We lack the example of the Francophone literary life, or that of England and the commonwealth and others; that is, centralized media criticism and evaluation of the literary and intellectual production in general, in the sense that the French reader everywhere, whether in Marseille, Dakar, or Beirut, knows what publications in Molière's language are worth reading today.

The Arab Booker Prize may be a step towards the crystallization of the Arab fiction scene, especially taking into consideration that the Arabic language is witnessing a novel boom that is unprecedented. For example, 131 novels from 18 different Arab countries participated in the Booker Prize, and if publishers were allowed an open list of candidates, the number would have exceeded 300, as one of the organizers said. On the other hand, this award helps expose new works and introduce writers and encourages newcomers to join this literary genre, in addition to the monetary prize which is not to be underestimated.

NOW Lebanon: When you write, do you write with a global audience in mind, or mainly with an Arab audience? Or specifically a Lebanese one?

Douaihy: I don’t know exactly whom I address when I write. At some moments, I think of my friends and their reactions when they read what I read. I think there are those who address a foreign reader or an Arab one, and they don’t use local expressions and mannerisms, aiming instead for generalities which I don’t think are successful. The [depiction of the] character in literary novels is a characteristic that guarantees it will reach all audiences. When I wrote about my town, sometimes using its semi-slang language, I didn’t feel alienated from Man and his common traits.

NOW Lebanon: Can you give us some general comments on the status of Lebanese literature, in the Arab world and/or the rest of the world?

Douaihy: There is no doubt that the Lebanese novel has acquired a status next to that of the Egyptian, which has a rich novel heritage, one that is richer and more varied. Since the Lebanese novel is relatively new, and didn’t prosper until 1975 – despite many successful attempts before that date, they remained fragmented and sporadic. The results of a census that was carried out by the committee of the Booker Prize showed a large number of Lebanese novels and their [high] literary caliber, as more than one member of the judging committee have admitted.

Little by little, the Lebanese novel is forging its way toward translation into other languages, even though it still is a phenomenon at the margin of translated literature. There are Lebanese novelists who are known more than others among the journalistic and academic elite of the Arab world, and here we must mention the bad trade in books that to a large extent obstructs the opening up of Arab literature. Publishers work alone without official attention and the cost and price of books differ widely from one country to another. I hope that Beirut will preserve its current role, or its previous role, despite all the stabs from those who never tire from inflicting them.

NOW Lebanon: Can you please tell us a little about any of your upcoming projects, following your success with June Rain?

Douaihy: I don’t feel like I’m capable of anything other than writing stories, and that’s what I’m trying to do in my attempt to write a new novel, in this renewable pleasure of entering a world and its neighboring personalities.

Interview by Zahra Hankir, NOW Lebanon

and the IPAF winner is...

On March 10th 2008, at the Rotana Beach Resort in Abu Dhabi, UAE, was held the ceremony of the IPAF prize.

The prize was given to Baha'a Taher, for his novel 'Sunset oasis'.






Above, from left to right, Elias Farkouh, Jabbour Douaihy and Khaled Khalifa, finalists to the IPAF prize, at breakfast!

we know good book when we see one!

We are very proud to inform you that three of our authors are finalists to the most prestigious Arab literary prize ever:

"In praise of hatred", by Khaled Khalifa, Syria,
"June rain", by Jabbour Douaihy, Lebanon
"The land of Purgatory", by Elias Farkouh, Jordan

Each of the finalists receives $10,000; the winner gets an additional $50,000. The winner will be announced on March 10th, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

The 6 shortlisted books are chosen from 131 entries: "June Rain", by Lebanon's Jabbour Douaihy; "In praise of hatred", by Syria's Khaled Khalifa; "The land of purgatory", by Jordan's Elias Farkouh; and also "Walking in the Dust", by Lebanon's May Menassa; "Swan Song", by Egypt's Mekkaoui Said; and "Sunset Oasis", by Baha Taher, also from Egypt.


Some details about the IPAF
The IPAF was officially launched in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in April 2007. It is the result of a collaborative effort by the Booker Prize Foundation, the Emirates Foundation and the Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic Dialogue, whose aim was to develop a dedicated prize for Arabic fiction.

The Booker prize foundation, is a prestigious literary prize established in 1968, awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland. A Russian version of the Booker Prize was created in 1992 and an African version, the "Caine Prize", was launched in 2000.

The winner of the Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and success. It is also a mark of distinction for authors to be nominated for the Booker longlist or selected for inclusion in the shortlist.

Jonathan Taylor, chairman of the Booker Prize Foundation, stressed that one of the IPAF's goals was to "secure recognition, reward and readership for outstanding Arabic fiction of the highest quality." He also said the prize would sponsor translation of the winning book into other languages. For more information on the IPAF, click here.