Interest in Arab literature in Britain is currently running high partly thanks to the London Book Fair (LBF) held at Earl's Court Exhibition Center over three days last week. This year the LBF chose the Arab World as its Market Focus, and more than 100 Arab publishing houses and cultural institutions had stands at the fair. In parallel with the Arab exhibitors' presence, the LFB, in partnership with the British Council, pulled out all the stops in organizing a rich program of seminars, talks, interviews and book launches. It seems safe to say that the Arab World Market Focus was the largest and most concentrated gathering of Arab authors and publishers ever seen in the British capital. More than 60 Arabs, most of them invited from abroad, participated as panelists in the seminars. They ranged from veterans such as the Egyptian winner of the first International Prize for Arab Fiction, Bahaa Taher (73), to new stars, among them Faiza Guene born to Algerian parents in France in 1985. Guene's first novel “Just Like Tomorrow”, written when she was only 17, was a major success in France and sold over 360,000 copies. The English translation of her second novel, “Dreams from the Endz”, is to be published by Chatto and Windus in June. The themes tackled at the seminars included international literary prizes and the Arab world, Iraqi literature and publishing, Palestinian writers and writing, business opportunities in the Arab World, translation and the dialogue of civilizations, women's writing, children's publishing, Arabic poetry, memory and memoir in contemporary Arabic writing, and Arabic fiction in the UK market. The British Council's literature adviser for the region, Suzanne Joinson, hopes that the Market Focus will have helped dispel some myths. For example the average British publisher does not think that they can make much money in the Arab world, but she points out that it is “an enormous market. It is something like 220 million people.” The secretary general of the Arab League Amr Moussa was the speaker at the Chairman's breakfast, the opening event of the fair. He welcomed the opportunity given by the Market Focus to “enlarge understanding and contribute to dialogue between nations, and to stand against those advocating policies of violence.” One of the main literary personalities at the fair was the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-Aswany, whose novel “The Yacoubian Building” has been a runaway success in Arabic and in English. The publication in September of “Chicago”, his second novel to be translated into English, is eagerly awaited. Al-Aswany was “author of the day” for the second day of the fair, during which he took part in the launch of the English PEN Online world Atlas, and was interviewed by critic and feature writer Stephanie Merritt in the English PEN literary cafe. The previous evening he had shared a platform at Foyle's bookshop with two writers of Libyan origin: the US-based poet, translator and scholar Khaled Mattawa and Hisham Matar, who lives in London and was shortlisted for the Man Booker for his first novel “In the Country of Men”, which has won several prizes. The three authors were interviewed by Dedi Feldman from “Words Without Borders”, the online magazine for international literature. Al-Aswany, a US-trained dentist, explained he was “never a dentist who turned to writing, but a writer who turned to dentistry.” His clinic is “a window on Egyptian society: a way to know people, listen to them and see exactly what happens.” Coincidentally, Saudi novelist Raja Al-Sanea, born in 1981, is also a dentist and is currently a postgraduate at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her controversial first novel “Girls of Riyadh” had astonishing success in Arabic, and has been translated into 23 languages. The English translation was published in hardback by Penguin Books last year, and Penguin is hoping for great things when it publishes the paperback edition in June. Al-Sanea was a panelist in the seminar on Trends in Contemporary Arabic Fiction – Representations of Place in Modern Arabic Literature. She said: “One of my main intentions when I started writing my novel ‘Girls of Riyadh' nine years ago was to represent us, the Saudi Arabian population in its early 20s, who witnessed the birth of the internet and all of its appendages. I wanted to document how Riyadh transformed from being a city and society ruled by traditions to a ‘virtual' space where youngsters got a chance to express themselves openly and without reservations.” The other Saudi novelist to participate in the Market Focus program was Raja Alem of Jeddah. She is the author of eight novels (two of which were translated into English and one into Spanish), four plays and poetry. Alem spoke at the session on women's writing from the Arab World, chaired by the Egyptian fiction writer and critic Radwa Ashour. Alem highlighted “the interest shown by the publishing industries concerning Arab women writers, especially Saudi writers like me.” She declared: “I detest this label of being ‘Saudi' and ‘woman'. When I first started considering publishing in the West I thought these two labels would help me, and give me an advantage in my chances of publishing.” But she soon found that the global publishing scene is “loaded with preconceptions and political requirements” and that the labels were a barrier to a theme such as hers, which is Makkah. In Alem's view, “we should place ourselves not among writers in the world but among the dreamers, among the travelers, among those who are trying to communicate outside of religion, outside of countries, outside of places.” The Saudi Embassy in London had a large stand at the fair which concentrated on Saudi universities and their research publications. The embassy's cultural attaché Professor Ghazy A Makky Almakky chaired a seminar in which Dr Sabah M Z Safi, associate professor of linguistics at King Abdulaziz University, gave a Panorama of Academic Research in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Professor Saad A Al-Bazei of the Department of English, College of Arts, King Saud University, spoke on Challenges and Growth Potentials in Saudi Culture. Professor Al-Bazei noted that “a flood of works of fiction has taken readers, and non-readers, by surprise.” In Saudi Arabia's first half century some 80 novels were published, an output dwarfed by the recent flood of around 100 novels over four years. Abu Dhabi and Dubai had a high profile at the fair. Kalima, the translation funding program of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, intends to translate 100 books into Arabic annually. During the fair Kalima announced the titles of its three latest translations, to add to the six previously announced. The Tarjem program of Dubai's Mohammad Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Foundation aims to translate 1000 bestsellers into Arabic over three years. Cherie Blair, the lawyer wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, made an appearance at the fair to present the International Young Publishing Entrepreneur (IYPE) Award to Nashwan A Al-Maghafi of Yemen Bookshop in Sanaa. The shortlist of nine included representatives of five Arab publishing-related businesses, among them Thuraya Batterjee of Kadi and Ramadi children's publishing house of Jeddah. One reason for the current high level of British interest in Arab literature is the new International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), worth a total of $60,000 to the winner plus guaranteed translation into English. The prize was awarded in March for the first time to Bahaa Taher for his novel “Sunset Oasis”. IPAF was established in association with the Booker Prize Foundation of London which administers the Man Booker Prize. All six writers shortlisted for the prize were invited to London for the Arab World Market Focus, where they took part in a session chaired by Palestinian critic Feissal Darraj. Winners of the Man Booker prize always enjoy a large increase in sales, and the shortlisted authors also benefit. It is hoped that the same will prove to be true of the “Arab Booker”. __
