The Novel in Arab Hands
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Blind spots are funny things. Once a gap in our knowledge becomes conspicuous, we may rush to fill it in the hope of free plunder. Usually the rush trails off in disappointment: We realize there is a great deal to learn partly because there is a great deal we are not interested in. Opportunity and interest are not the same thing.
“The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction” (Anchor, 486 pages, $15.95), edited by veteran translator Denys Johnson-Davies, deserves our carefully calibrated interest. Mr. Johnson-Davies makes no grand claim for Arabic fiction, which he sees as a unity, stretching from Morocco to Iraq. “The idea of an author creating characters and making them inhabit worlds of his creation not only was foreign to the Muslim Arab mind but was even regarded as almost unacceptable.” “The Thousand and One Nights” was never held in high esteem by modern Arab writers. The first Arabic novel dates from 1929.
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